In his “Libya Speech” of 28 March, President Obama became the political equivalent of Pilate, washing his hands of the violence connected to his rape of Libya and turning the whole mess over to the NATO rabble for the furtherance of the crucifixion of Qaddafi. It needed ten days or so after he began the carnage for him to come to this point but he majestically proclaimed this fact with a toss of the head as he bid a fond adieu to NATO, effective 30 March, with best wishes, of course.
Obviously uptight, Obama seemed to be trying to convince himself of what he was saying and gave repetition/redundancy a new life. He could have been through in ten minutes but he belabored his subject to the point of boredom. He began, as always, with high praise for the military but had to be somewhat flustered by all the military brass before him, and none smiling. The officers recognized his floundering and had to wonder why he hadn’t at least tried to explain his actions when he instituted them and no doubt were wondering why he called his presentation an “update,” not an explanation of his actions.
The reason, of course, was the fact that he had no clear plan from the get-go in order to present one, simply mentioning (or maybe it was State Secretary Clinton, certainly not the military) that he would start the operation – just establishing a “no-fly” zone – and then, apparently without consulting the alliance, that NATO would take over. His primary reason for the action seemed to be that Qaddafi was attacking his people but didn’t mention that his people had taken to the streets first.
This is no brief for Qaddafi, a cruel man, but no different from the other Muslim dictators that brutalize their people….like Assad in Syria or Saleh in Yemen currently. Regimes generally change on the point of the sword in the Middle East so the Libya issue was sort of just normal – civil war among the tribes with the strongest and/or meanest taking over, or the current despot winning reelection the mid-east way, with blood in the streets. Nothing new!
Obama was sure to mention Iraq – the great mistake – sort of in the vein of Jimmy Carter, never one to pass up an opportunity to slam Bush 43, even – or especially – while on foreign soil. Obama chose a “foreign” theater with a huge captive audience, ironically, of the military, to speechify formally (complete with teleprompter) to his people instead of in the Oval Office, which is where he should have been alone, not making a speech but simply explaining his actions personally. This was the way of both Bushes and Reagan, as well as Clinton…same day stuff, not an “update” after a five-day vacation in Latin America plus the weekend NCAA earth-shaking dribble-derby. He even compared Libya to the Bosnia actions (apples to oranges), extolling the speed of his maneuvering (actually his bumbling) while obviously denigrating that of Clinton.
Whether as simply disingenuous or plainly stupid, Obama apparently didn’t realize in slamming Bush again that he had done just what he said he was against in 2002-03 – invading another country without cause, though he failed to mention that Bush had gone to the Congress and secured approval, whereas he hadn’t bothered. The military brass must have winced when he said that non-military means would be employed from now on to bring Qadaffi to his knees, thus giving away the game and encouraging the dictator to sweat out the rebels.
The president said, “Moreover, America has an important strategic interest in preventing Qaddafi from overrunning those who oppose him.” Defense Secretary Gates, sitting before him, had stated days ago that this was not true, meaning that Gates was either stupid or a liar…or that Obama was. The citizen can make the call. Libya’s entire population is 2 million people less than that of New York City. Qaddafi’s troops number 76,000, compared to the total military of the U.S. – 3.3 million, counting the Reserves and National Guard, with 1.4 million on active duty. Should Americans shudder at the magnitude of Qadaffi’s “strategic” threat? Obama has been on the stump lately ranting against “bullying,” and gave an exact example of it in Libya.
If little Libya was of strategic interest, just think of the strategic interest of Syria, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Jordan, Morocco, Algeria and Iran vis-à-vis the current Libya-like repression in those countries. It’s a lead-pipe cinch that Obama has learned in Libya (or has he?) that he needs to stick to giving odds on the NCAA and never again attempt to plan military operations (either when or how), especially as designed by State Secretary Clinton, as apparently in this case. She’s off to Europe to make the case but should only resign. As for Obama, impeachment would be too nice. The patients are running the Washington asylum.
But it’s like Obama said in his best “in-your-face-America” posture concerning his prerogatives…We won!
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Imperial Presidency?
In November 2007, then-Senator Barack Obama introduced (actually introduced by Sen. Reid in Obama’s name) a Senate resolution stating that President Bush did not have Congressional authorization to use military force against Iran: Now, therefore, be it Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, that nothing in the... resolution [amendment] previously adopted, or any other provision of law.. shall be construed to authorize, encourage, or in any way address the use of the Armed Forces of the United States against Iran.
Obama was busy campaigning, presumably, for the election in November 2009 (two years is such a short time-frame) that he had to have Reid to be his proxy for this vitally important document. Iran posed no direct threat to the U.S., so Bush might have needed to pay attention to Obama’s intellect…except for the fact, of course (war powers act?), that the Iranians were extremely well-documented as providing the IEDs that were used to kill U.S. soldiers 24/7 in Iraq. The devices and/or other devices were actually stamped as Iranian in origin. Bush, as he had done before, would have consulted Congress anyway since that made more sense than to just start bombing another country.
Whoa! On the basis of his own resolution, how did Obama get authorization to just start bombing Libya one night, announcing that war-act in Brasilia, Brazil, and then continuing to be AWOL for five days while U.S. Bombers and missiles slammed the bejesus out of Libya, population 6.3 million, 2 million less than New York City?
Was Libya furnishing military materiel in Iraq or Afghanistan? Well…no. Had Qaddafi flown planes into the Empire State Building? Well…no. Did he have WMD secluded somewhere in the desert? Well…no. In fact, hadn’t Libya coughed up its WMD to the U.S. years ago? Well…yes.
Obama precisely emulated Emperor Hirohito vis-à-vis 07 December 1941, when Japan almost took out Pearl Harbor, killing nearly 3,000 GIs and brought America into WWII. He plans to speak to the nation on 28 March to explain his incredible attack on a soveriegn nation that posed no threat to this country but he might be much better served at this point to keep his mouth shut. How can he explain away something as bizarre and obviously illegal as that?
Obama has proven beyond doubt that he’s reckless, arrogant and insensitive to the putting of U.S. GIs in harm’s way for no reason at all with regard to the national interest, which is all that’s supposed to concern him. In his campaign, he threatened to take military action in Pakistan if elected if the Pakistanis didn’t try harder to take out the Taliban. Imagine what would happen if he decided the time had come now, what with Pakistan having atomic bombs here and there.
Wait, some slack, please! The dear leader got his authorization from the United Nations. That’s all that was necessary – not that stuffy, slow Congress that Constitutionally has to declare war – because the world is just one great international community and he was just listening to his “gang-of-three” Amazons reminding him that mean people have to be wasted so the little people can be protected.
So…he dropped some bombs on Qaddafi’s house…and apparently missed. But he’s still trying, so his heart’s in the right place. It would be hard to make all this up…but there it is. And…puhleeze, don’t mention Reagan’s dropping bombs on Qaddafi’s house back in the 80s. He had well-documented cause and explained it quite clearly and immediately (the same day)…and it had nothing to do with authorization from the UN, which ought to either be disassembled entirely or marooned on some island on the Equator. Oh yes…Reagan announced that event in the Oval Office, not in some foreign capital.
Former president Clinton was impeached for perjury, telling a lie under oath. His lie didn’t hurt anyone and the Senate didn’t convict him and expel him from office. Obama, without any authorization or valid reason regarding the national interest, has done something that has caused the deaths of no telling how many Libyans who happened to just be in the wrong country at the wrong time. Should one assume he was just ignorant of the proper protocols for attacking another country? If so, should he just perhaps resign. After all, President Nixon didn’t cause profound death and grief, but he resigned simply because he tried a cover-up, which also didn’t hurt anybody.
Then, there’s the policy angle. Obama said Qaddafi had to go but that his bombing was not meant to cause him to go and/or effect regime-change. What, then, was it for – actually called kinetic military action or something like that? Who knows? Oh yes…to protect Libyans from Qaddafi. That’s weird since the president, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, has joined Qaddafi in the killing.
This is what Qaddafi said in his famous (infamous) speech at the UN in 2009, “We are content and happy if Obama can stay forever as president of the United States.” Oh yeah?
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Obama was busy campaigning, presumably, for the election in November 2009 (two years is such a short time-frame) that he had to have Reid to be his proxy for this vitally important document. Iran posed no direct threat to the U.S., so Bush might have needed to pay attention to Obama’s intellect…except for the fact, of course (war powers act?), that the Iranians were extremely well-documented as providing the IEDs that were used to kill U.S. soldiers 24/7 in Iraq. The devices and/or other devices were actually stamped as Iranian in origin. Bush, as he had done before, would have consulted Congress anyway since that made more sense than to just start bombing another country.
Whoa! On the basis of his own resolution, how did Obama get authorization to just start bombing Libya one night, announcing that war-act in Brasilia, Brazil, and then continuing to be AWOL for five days while U.S. Bombers and missiles slammed the bejesus out of Libya, population 6.3 million, 2 million less than New York City?
Was Libya furnishing military materiel in Iraq or Afghanistan? Well…no. Had Qaddafi flown planes into the Empire State Building? Well…no. Did he have WMD secluded somewhere in the desert? Well…no. In fact, hadn’t Libya coughed up its WMD to the U.S. years ago? Well…yes.
Obama precisely emulated Emperor Hirohito vis-à-vis 07 December 1941, when Japan almost took out Pearl Harbor, killing nearly 3,000 GIs and brought America into WWII. He plans to speak to the nation on 28 March to explain his incredible attack on a soveriegn nation that posed no threat to this country but he might be much better served at this point to keep his mouth shut. How can he explain away something as bizarre and obviously illegal as that?
Obama has proven beyond doubt that he’s reckless, arrogant and insensitive to the putting of U.S. GIs in harm’s way for no reason at all with regard to the national interest, which is all that’s supposed to concern him. In his campaign, he threatened to take military action in Pakistan if elected if the Pakistanis didn’t try harder to take out the Taliban. Imagine what would happen if he decided the time had come now, what with Pakistan having atomic bombs here and there.
Wait, some slack, please! The dear leader got his authorization from the United Nations. That’s all that was necessary – not that stuffy, slow Congress that Constitutionally has to declare war – because the world is just one great international community and he was just listening to his “gang-of-three” Amazons reminding him that mean people have to be wasted so the little people can be protected.
So…he dropped some bombs on Qaddafi’s house…and apparently missed. But he’s still trying, so his heart’s in the right place. It would be hard to make all this up…but there it is. And…puhleeze, don’t mention Reagan’s dropping bombs on Qaddafi’s house back in the 80s. He had well-documented cause and explained it quite clearly and immediately (the same day)…and it had nothing to do with authorization from the UN, which ought to either be disassembled entirely or marooned on some island on the Equator. Oh yes…Reagan announced that event in the Oval Office, not in some foreign capital.
Former president Clinton was impeached for perjury, telling a lie under oath. His lie didn’t hurt anyone and the Senate didn’t convict him and expel him from office. Obama, without any authorization or valid reason regarding the national interest, has done something that has caused the deaths of no telling how many Libyans who happened to just be in the wrong country at the wrong time. Should one assume he was just ignorant of the proper protocols for attacking another country? If so, should he just perhaps resign. After all, President Nixon didn’t cause profound death and grief, but he resigned simply because he tried a cover-up, which also didn’t hurt anybody.
Then, there’s the policy angle. Obama said Qaddafi had to go but that his bombing was not meant to cause him to go and/or effect regime-change. What, then, was it for – actually called kinetic military action or something like that? Who knows? Oh yes…to protect Libyans from Qaddafi. That’s weird since the president, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, has joined Qaddafi in the killing.
This is what Qaddafi said in his famous (infamous) speech at the UN in 2009, “We are content and happy if Obama can stay forever as president of the United States.” Oh yeah?
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
New Military Method - "On-the-Fly"
Defense Secretary Gates introduced a new facet of the president’s “Obama Doctrine” in Russia the other day, namely, the “on-the-fly” approach to waging…well, whatever Obama is waging in Libya these days. It can’t be called war – far too sanguinary. Besides, if it were war, he might be expected to present his plans for it to Congress.
That’s where waging war “on-the-fly” comes in – no actual plans, just haul out the bombers, missiles, and whatever else is handy and “bring it on.” So…since there are no plans for waging anything, Congress doesn’t need to be in the loop. The big deal is to save Libyan civilians from Qaddafi, so the solution is to bomb the bejesus out of Tripoli and elsewhere and kill other Libyans in order to save Libyans. Sound crazy? Of course not! Super-intellectual Obama would never do anything crazy. Obama has said Qaddafi is not a target, but his compound has been bombed more than once. That’s real intellect in action.
The big news of the twenty-third is that Syrian forces wasted six…you guessed it…Syrians in one day. They were protesting, like those squirrelly Libyans, so they had to go. The word was bandied about that they had their weapons and whatever else stored in the…yep, the mosque. Sound familiar? They just closed one of those warmongering mosques in Berlin recently…but in Syria, whose strongman Assad is a “brother” of the first order to Iran’s Ahmadinejad, Assad’s gang killed six Muslims in their mosque. Never mind killing them in the street.
If the Obama Doctrine is to be followed in Syria, it can be expected that some sort of action “on-the-fly” will be necessary since there isn’t time to get a plan ready. After all, a plan for Libya couldn’t be conceived in nearly a month, necessitating pulling off last week’s strictly “on-the-fly,” with the added advantage of not having to present it to the Congress. In fact, Obama started the action and immediately left the country for a few days living it up south of the border, so he was unavailable anyway.
Then, of course, there’s Yemen (fighting in the streets) and Saudi Arabia (protesters all over the place), meaning that innocent people have to be protected throughout the Middle East. These things have been going on for quite a while but Obama’s folks have no plans ready so maybe there will be more stuff done “on-the-fly,” the better to save Muslims from Muslims by killing Muslims.
Of course, Defense Secretary Gates and his crowd over at the Pentagon didn’t want to do anything concerning Libya, already in deep do-do in Iraq and Afghanistan and understanding that killing one group of Libyans in order to save another group of Libyans doesn’t make a lot of sense. Military minds can be so technical!
So, besides Senators McCain, Lieberman, Graham and Kerry (about as weird a combination as possible), who has instigated this absolutely essential “on-the-fly” operation in order to save Libyans from Libyans? Could it be the Amazons – State Secretary Clinton, UN Ambassador Rice, and Obama’s foreign policy guru Power?
These gals must be on to something…they got the Security Council to go for a Libyan operation, although they probably didn’t mention that it would be done “on-the-fly,” i.e., with virtually no planning at all. The distaff side of government can be rough and tough, although the boots on the ground and in the air are 99.9% male. And the Congresspersons can just…well, they aren’t doing much now anyhow. Apparently, the feminine approach is to save the “people in the streets” no matter how many lives that costs.
Of course, the gals got hoodwinked…but that isn’t said pejoratively. They got the (drum roll, please) ARAB LEAGUE to throw in with them. The Arab League was instituted back in the late 40s and its first expression of goodwill was a war on Israel. That didn’t work, obviously, so now the League has decided all these years later to try its luck on Muslim Qaddafi, whom its members don’t like anyway.
The Amazons were simply naïve. They didn’t realize that the mark of an astute Muslim is the power to outwit his adversary, in this case Obama and the Amazons (sounds like a rock band). The League promised to deliver both airpower and troops in the fight against Libya. Instead, the League has been whining that the U.S., Britain and France have gone too far – Libyans have been (gasp) killed. Count the League out. It was smart enough to get the westerners to do the dirty work, while the League puffs on its collective hookah and laughs at the Amazons, whom it thinks should be kept in the kitchen, pregnant and barefoot anyway.
Obama mistakenly assumed and said publicly that NATO would take over the task from the USA or act in support…something like that. That won’t happen (the NATO honchos in a fierce argument) and it appears that the Brits and Frenchies will continue the important work of killing Libyans to save Libyans.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
That’s where waging war “on-the-fly” comes in – no actual plans, just haul out the bombers, missiles, and whatever else is handy and “bring it on.” So…since there are no plans for waging anything, Congress doesn’t need to be in the loop. The big deal is to save Libyan civilians from Qaddafi, so the solution is to bomb the bejesus out of Tripoli and elsewhere and kill other Libyans in order to save Libyans. Sound crazy? Of course not! Super-intellectual Obama would never do anything crazy. Obama has said Qaddafi is not a target, but his compound has been bombed more than once. That’s real intellect in action.
The big news of the twenty-third is that Syrian forces wasted six…you guessed it…Syrians in one day. They were protesting, like those squirrelly Libyans, so they had to go. The word was bandied about that they had their weapons and whatever else stored in the…yep, the mosque. Sound familiar? They just closed one of those warmongering mosques in Berlin recently…but in Syria, whose strongman Assad is a “brother” of the first order to Iran’s Ahmadinejad, Assad’s gang killed six Muslims in their mosque. Never mind killing them in the street.
If the Obama Doctrine is to be followed in Syria, it can be expected that some sort of action “on-the-fly” will be necessary since there isn’t time to get a plan ready. After all, a plan for Libya couldn’t be conceived in nearly a month, necessitating pulling off last week’s strictly “on-the-fly,” with the added advantage of not having to present it to the Congress. In fact, Obama started the action and immediately left the country for a few days living it up south of the border, so he was unavailable anyway.
Then, of course, there’s Yemen (fighting in the streets) and Saudi Arabia (protesters all over the place), meaning that innocent people have to be protected throughout the Middle East. These things have been going on for quite a while but Obama’s folks have no plans ready so maybe there will be more stuff done “on-the-fly,” the better to save Muslims from Muslims by killing Muslims.
Of course, Defense Secretary Gates and his crowd over at the Pentagon didn’t want to do anything concerning Libya, already in deep do-do in Iraq and Afghanistan and understanding that killing one group of Libyans in order to save another group of Libyans doesn’t make a lot of sense. Military minds can be so technical!
So, besides Senators McCain, Lieberman, Graham and Kerry (about as weird a combination as possible), who has instigated this absolutely essential “on-the-fly” operation in order to save Libyans from Libyans? Could it be the Amazons – State Secretary Clinton, UN Ambassador Rice, and Obama’s foreign policy guru Power?
These gals must be on to something…they got the Security Council to go for a Libyan operation, although they probably didn’t mention that it would be done “on-the-fly,” i.e., with virtually no planning at all. The distaff side of government can be rough and tough, although the boots on the ground and in the air are 99.9% male. And the Congresspersons can just…well, they aren’t doing much now anyhow. Apparently, the feminine approach is to save the “people in the streets” no matter how many lives that costs.
Of course, the gals got hoodwinked…but that isn’t said pejoratively. They got the (drum roll, please) ARAB LEAGUE to throw in with them. The Arab League was instituted back in the late 40s and its first expression of goodwill was a war on Israel. That didn’t work, obviously, so now the League has decided all these years later to try its luck on Muslim Qaddafi, whom its members don’t like anyway.
The Amazons were simply naïve. They didn’t realize that the mark of an astute Muslim is the power to outwit his adversary, in this case Obama and the Amazons (sounds like a rock band). The League promised to deliver both airpower and troops in the fight against Libya. Instead, the League has been whining that the U.S., Britain and France have gone too far – Libyans have been (gasp) killed. Count the League out. It was smart enough to get the westerners to do the dirty work, while the League puffs on its collective hookah and laughs at the Amazons, whom it thinks should be kept in the kitchen, pregnant and barefoot anyway.
Obama mistakenly assumed and said publicly that NATO would take over the task from the USA or act in support…something like that. That won’t happen (the NATO honchos in a fierce argument) and it appears that the Brits and Frenchies will continue the important work of killing Libyans to save Libyans.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Libya...Whose War?
This is the last paragraph of a Reuters account of 22 March: “On Monday, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said the mission should be limited to creating a no-fly zone and that Italian planes taking part would not open fire.” If Italian planes won’t open fire, why would they even be in the air? This account is quoted here just to point to the fact that NATO members are nowhere near any decision/consensus concerning which country does what, when, and where, as well as who will run the whole shooting match, apparently dividing it into military and political components.
It’s probable that NATO members would just as soon not get caught up in an obvious violation of another nation’s sovereignty, just as has been the attitude of U.S. Defense Secretary Gates for the other reason that pouncing on Libya presents a bloody mess when this nation doesn’t need another war. To show his concern, he has been in Russia. To show his concern, Obama, disregarding the position of his own military leadership, has been out of the country since he directed the military to lower the boom on Qaddafi. What was/is he thinking?
The NATO members are squabbling apparently to an extent that will make the alliance fairly useless, especially since Qaddafi won’t put up any planes for them to shoot down and no one wants to put an army on the ground. The UN is supposed to regiment peace-keepers, not armies of aggression, but has passed a resolution for Libyan action (setting up a no-fly zone) and obviously leaving it up to NATO or any other entity so inclined to do the dirty work, another way of fingering Uncle Sam for that privilege. Obama has been suckered.
According to Reuters, Obama, trying to avoid getting bogged down in a war in another Muslim country, said on Monday that Washington would cede control of operations within days and NATO would have a coordinating role, but NATO ambassadors are arguing about that. Has NATO ever conducted a no-fly zone? Not likely. Peace-keepers are ground troops, not fighter/bomber pilots.
What right did Obama think he had to simply implicate NATO, in the first place? After all, Turkey, 99.8% Muslim, is a key member of NATO and might not appreciate NATO bombing Libya, which is 97% Muslim. NATO-member Albania is 70% Muslim. It’s one thing for Muslims to kill Muslims, which they do routinely, but quite another thing for other folks to kill Muslims.
Security Council members China and Russia did not approve, but also did not veto, the UN sanction of the no-fly zone. Now, however, China is calling for an immediate cease-fire, according to Voice of America. Cease-fire of what? The no-fly zone? The Libyans? The Arab League approved the UN action but now has “reservations,” after offering no help. What reservations? Obviously, the Libyans will continue to fight each other, notwithstanding anything called-for by China, the Arab League or any other entity.
With the president AWOL in Latin America and the Defense Secretary schmoozing with the Russkies in the midst of all this action, the message should be clear that, especially since Obama has already telegraphed that no American foot will touch Libyan soil, another way of announcing that no foot of any other nation is likely to land in Libya, Qaddafi will probably have to be killed as the only solution. Obama has already said he had to go but that the USA is not interested in regime-change. This is the penultimate oxymoron and indicates the total lack of leadership (or brains?) in Washington.
Defense Secretary Gates made it abundantly clear in a recent Congressional hearing that instituting a no-fly zone meant knocking out ground anti-aircraft installations on the ground first, clearly implying that Libyans would be killed, an act of war. As it turns out, the planes also strafed/bombed Libyan army units such as tanks, totally illegal as a no-fly requirement and certain to cause civilian deaths/injuries, as well. In other words, the mission itself was violated. Why kill Libyans when they are perfectly capable of killing each other?
The whole world is watching one of the most botched-up international actions imaginable. The insurgent Libyans have no leader and no identity. Qaddafi has said that al Qaeda is his real nemesis. He may be right. No one seems to know who is being helped…just a group known as “the people.” Muslim-dominated countries change leadership the old-fashioned way – through coups of one kind or another. The West simply can’t understand this and, absent any self-defense threats, go merrily along trying to make democracies out of un-democratic people.
More’s the pity in this country, with leadership apparently having no understanding of history…or even of the present.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
It’s probable that NATO members would just as soon not get caught up in an obvious violation of another nation’s sovereignty, just as has been the attitude of U.S. Defense Secretary Gates for the other reason that pouncing on Libya presents a bloody mess when this nation doesn’t need another war. To show his concern, he has been in Russia. To show his concern, Obama, disregarding the position of his own military leadership, has been out of the country since he directed the military to lower the boom on Qaddafi. What was/is he thinking?
The NATO members are squabbling apparently to an extent that will make the alliance fairly useless, especially since Qaddafi won’t put up any planes for them to shoot down and no one wants to put an army on the ground. The UN is supposed to regiment peace-keepers, not armies of aggression, but has passed a resolution for Libyan action (setting up a no-fly zone) and obviously leaving it up to NATO or any other entity so inclined to do the dirty work, another way of fingering Uncle Sam for that privilege. Obama has been suckered.
According to Reuters, Obama, trying to avoid getting bogged down in a war in another Muslim country, said on Monday that Washington would cede control of operations within days and NATO would have a coordinating role, but NATO ambassadors are arguing about that. Has NATO ever conducted a no-fly zone? Not likely. Peace-keepers are ground troops, not fighter/bomber pilots.
What right did Obama think he had to simply implicate NATO, in the first place? After all, Turkey, 99.8% Muslim, is a key member of NATO and might not appreciate NATO bombing Libya, which is 97% Muslim. NATO-member Albania is 70% Muslim. It’s one thing for Muslims to kill Muslims, which they do routinely, but quite another thing for other folks to kill Muslims.
Security Council members China and Russia did not approve, but also did not veto, the UN sanction of the no-fly zone. Now, however, China is calling for an immediate cease-fire, according to Voice of America. Cease-fire of what? The no-fly zone? The Libyans? The Arab League approved the UN action but now has “reservations,” after offering no help. What reservations? Obviously, the Libyans will continue to fight each other, notwithstanding anything called-for by China, the Arab League or any other entity.
With the president AWOL in Latin America and the Defense Secretary schmoozing with the Russkies in the midst of all this action, the message should be clear that, especially since Obama has already telegraphed that no American foot will touch Libyan soil, another way of announcing that no foot of any other nation is likely to land in Libya, Qaddafi will probably have to be killed as the only solution. Obama has already said he had to go but that the USA is not interested in regime-change. This is the penultimate oxymoron and indicates the total lack of leadership (or brains?) in Washington.
Defense Secretary Gates made it abundantly clear in a recent Congressional hearing that instituting a no-fly zone meant knocking out ground anti-aircraft installations on the ground first, clearly implying that Libyans would be killed, an act of war. As it turns out, the planes also strafed/bombed Libyan army units such as tanks, totally illegal as a no-fly requirement and certain to cause civilian deaths/injuries, as well. In other words, the mission itself was violated. Why kill Libyans when they are perfectly capable of killing each other?
The whole world is watching one of the most botched-up international actions imaginable. The insurgent Libyans have no leader and no identity. Qaddafi has said that al Qaeda is his real nemesis. He may be right. No one seems to know who is being helped…just a group known as “the people.” Muslim-dominated countries change leadership the old-fashioned way – through coups of one kind or another. The West simply can’t understand this and, absent any self-defense threats, go merrily along trying to make democracies out of un-democratic people.
More’s the pity in this country, with leadership apparently having no understanding of history…or even of the present.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Monday, March 21, 2011
The U.S. & Civil War
The U.S. went to battle in Afghanistan and Iraq for reasons of national interest – 9/11 and the determination by the top international intelligence agencies that Saddam had WMD, which he probably transferred to Syria from Sept 2001 through January 2002. These were not civil wars, as was not the UN-approved Kuwait dustup in 1991.
Abe Lincoln and the North aided and abetted by Jefferson Davis and the South conducted a civil war (Americans fighting Americans), with the Confederacy recognized by no other power as a government, though the South longed for Britain as an ally and fired the first shot at the North. No other country came to the aid officially of either side, though trade continued by individuals. There might have been allies except that no one could figure how the war would turn out and couldn’t afford to take a chance on being on the wrong side.
This is the same setup in Libya – a civil war, with Libya (Qaddafi) desperately needing and not getting allies. Obama, without consulting Congress, committed the U.S. to help the rebels, who have no leader and no identity, and thus no accountability responsibility. In effect, he attacked a sovereign nation that posed absolutely no threat to this country, never mind the angst a lot of people here and abroad have toward Qaddafi. This was an act of war. In both the Afghan and Iraq affairs the president not only consulted Congress but sought and acquired approval.
Obama, who wouldn’t know an M-16 from a Chevy tie-rod, seeks to govern by executive order and through the courts. After giving his “war on Libya” order, he conveniently left the country for a few days. The command center for the operation has been on a U.S. destroyer, though Obama has declared that no ground troops will be used, something no military man would ever divulge, and American planes and missiles have been used to kill civilians.
The Defense Department fought with the State Department over the issue, with Obama/Hillary (after weeks of position-changing) winning out over the military experts, who wanted no part of this new and probably endless conflict – at least until Qaddafi is killed, with the latest effort to get him apparently a failure. The conditions in Yemen and Bahrain and to a lesser extent in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria are exactly like those in Libya and likewise no threat to this country. What will Obama do about them? He has said he intends to “handoff” the Libya matter to the Europeans and the Arab League after he’s done the dirty work. That won’t happen because they lack what it takes.
As for the Arab League, fuggeddaboutit. The only thing Muslims enjoy more than killing Americans/ Jews is killing other Muslims. After the League got in bed with Obama and the Europeans and the bombing started, however, the League decided that the whole thing was too violent and that their new “friends of the Evil West” had simply gone too far and were (GASP!!!) actually killing Muslims, apparently never realizing that bombs/missiles don’t always hit the intended targets, never mind that Muslim homicide/suicide bombers dispatch Muslims all the time…on purpose…just routine stuff!
So…will any Arab country actually contribute any effort in the Libyan matter? After all, the word is that the Europeans and Obama/Hillary wouldn’t lift a hand if the Arab league didn’t agree to the carnage. Now that the carnage has started (and no one seems to know what this country’s plan is), don’t look for much if any help from Jordan, Egypt or even the Saudis. In the first place, they don’t have much to offer, and in the second place, why bother as long as they can dupe the guilt-ridden westerners into doing ALL the dirty work.
An interesting if not morbidly hilarious aside has to do with Nany Pelosi’s sojourn in Italy, ostensibly to hold talks with Italian officials, including the defense minister, according to The Blaze of 21 March. Probably no one in this country would have known about this little vacation, except that she had to spend a brief time in a hospital, and the word got out. The U.S. Embassy in Rome declined comment.
Maybe Obama thought his reelection prospects needed a war of his own on his resume. One can only hope for his removal in 2012. His presidency is an anomaly without peer. Civil wars belong to the countries in which they are waged. If Qadaffi goes down, al Qaeda will have a new training-ground much closer to the U.S. than located farther to the east.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Abe Lincoln and the North aided and abetted by Jefferson Davis and the South conducted a civil war (Americans fighting Americans), with the Confederacy recognized by no other power as a government, though the South longed for Britain as an ally and fired the first shot at the North. No other country came to the aid officially of either side, though trade continued by individuals. There might have been allies except that no one could figure how the war would turn out and couldn’t afford to take a chance on being on the wrong side.
This is the same setup in Libya – a civil war, with Libya (Qaddafi) desperately needing and not getting allies. Obama, without consulting Congress, committed the U.S. to help the rebels, who have no leader and no identity, and thus no accountability responsibility. In effect, he attacked a sovereign nation that posed absolutely no threat to this country, never mind the angst a lot of people here and abroad have toward Qaddafi. This was an act of war. In both the Afghan and Iraq affairs the president not only consulted Congress but sought and acquired approval.
Obama, who wouldn’t know an M-16 from a Chevy tie-rod, seeks to govern by executive order and through the courts. After giving his “war on Libya” order, he conveniently left the country for a few days. The command center for the operation has been on a U.S. destroyer, though Obama has declared that no ground troops will be used, something no military man would ever divulge, and American planes and missiles have been used to kill civilians.
The Defense Department fought with the State Department over the issue, with Obama/Hillary (after weeks of position-changing) winning out over the military experts, who wanted no part of this new and probably endless conflict – at least until Qaddafi is killed, with the latest effort to get him apparently a failure. The conditions in Yemen and Bahrain and to a lesser extent in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria are exactly like those in Libya and likewise no threat to this country. What will Obama do about them? He has said he intends to “handoff” the Libya matter to the Europeans and the Arab League after he’s done the dirty work. That won’t happen because they lack what it takes.
As for the Arab League, fuggeddaboutit. The only thing Muslims enjoy more than killing Americans/ Jews is killing other Muslims. After the League got in bed with Obama and the Europeans and the bombing started, however, the League decided that the whole thing was too violent and that their new “friends of the Evil West” had simply gone too far and were (GASP!!!) actually killing Muslims, apparently never realizing that bombs/missiles don’t always hit the intended targets, never mind that Muslim homicide/suicide bombers dispatch Muslims all the time…on purpose…just routine stuff!
So…will any Arab country actually contribute any effort in the Libyan matter? After all, the word is that the Europeans and Obama/Hillary wouldn’t lift a hand if the Arab league didn’t agree to the carnage. Now that the carnage has started (and no one seems to know what this country’s plan is), don’t look for much if any help from Jordan, Egypt or even the Saudis. In the first place, they don’t have much to offer, and in the second place, why bother as long as they can dupe the guilt-ridden westerners into doing ALL the dirty work.
An interesting if not morbidly hilarious aside has to do with Nany Pelosi’s sojourn in Italy, ostensibly to hold talks with Italian officials, including the defense minister, according to The Blaze of 21 March. Probably no one in this country would have known about this little vacation, except that she had to spend a brief time in a hospital, and the word got out. The U.S. Embassy in Rome declined comment.
Maybe Obama thought his reelection prospects needed a war of his own on his resume. One can only hope for his removal in 2012. His presidency is an anomaly without peer. Civil wars belong to the countries in which they are waged. If Qadaffi goes down, al Qaeda will have a new training-ground much closer to the U.S. than located farther to the east.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
A Time to Speak...and Not to Speak
An important component of leadership is not in just knowing what to say but also in knowing when and when not to say anything. President Obama has seemed unaware of this in recent days, not only in his performance in foreign affairs but in domestic matters, as well.
On the domestic front, this is from the Washington Post of 17 February: Obama accused Scott Walker, the state's new Republican governor, of unleashing an "assault" on unions in pushing emergency legislation that would change future collective-bargaining agreements that affect most public employees, including teachers.
This is from Fox News of 25 February: When candidate Obama was campaigning in South Carolina in 2007, he said he was proud to wear the “union label” and that if workers were denied rights to organize or collectively bargain when he was elected, “I'll put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself, I'll will walk on that picket line with you as president of the United States of America.”
It seems from the former quote that the president recognized the necessity, according to his philosophy, of doing what he promised in the second quote. Either he misspoke (politicians never lie) in one or both of those quotes, or he simply didn’t mean what he said, actually misspeaking (but not lying, of course). In any case, he was not seen, whether in comfortable shoes or not, walking a picket/protester line in Wisconsin. Words have a way of coming back to haunt.
Obviously, Obama should have said absolutely nothing with respect to the Wisconsin affair. In South Carolina, he clearly was pandering, often called campaigning, wherein the truth is actually not expected in presidential politics. However, a lie is a lie is a lie.
In foreign affairs, the president would have done well to say nothing recently. He decided that Egyptian President Mubarak should leave office, called him on the phone to tell him so, and then sent an emissary to make sure Mubarak understood Obama’s edict. The emissary disgreed publicly with the president after he had arrived on the scene and observed the actual facts.
Mubarak did leave office eventually (not just when the prez told him to) but not because of Obama’s edict; rather, he got out of Dodge because his army would not be expected to fire on fellow Egyptians. Egypt now is in turmoil, with the latest fad being a monstrous effort to drive Christians from the country. There’s no significant governmental structure and chaos will prevail. Obama would have been better off to keep his mouth shut. Ditto for State Secretary (rubber stamp) Clinton, both of whom tried to run another country’s government.
Or…take the case of Libya. It took a while as people died in the streets (was Obama on a lengthy learning curve?) but finally Obama told Libyan strongman Qadaffi to make haste and take a powder. Qaddafi demurred, knowing that in his rule the army and hired mercenaries WOULD fire on Libyans, thus making Obama’s edict worthless and a subject of ridicule throughout the world.
This would not necessarily be the case if President Obama had done anything to back up his edict to Qaddafi. There was much talk of a no-fly-zone and this was even approved by the Arab League, amounting to making war on Libya. Obama certainly was not prepared to do that and so sanctions have been put in place instead, as if they mean anything.
The president hasn’t been as feckless as the French government, which recognized officially an opposition “government,” knowing full well that it wouldn’t lift a finger to help that group of insurgents. The fact remains, however, that he has talked the walk but will not walk the walk, not least because this country will not stand for another Middle East dustup. Obviously, he should have kept his mouth shut.
The president’s words about unionists and collective bargaining meant nothing. His words concerning both Mubarak and Qaddafi meant nothing. In none of these cases was he prepared to actually DO anything. Talk is cheap. But the greater truth is simply that there are times when there should be no talk at all, such as when no action is planned…or, when action IS planned. Most often, silence is golden.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
On the domestic front, this is from the Washington Post of 17 February: Obama accused Scott Walker, the state's new Republican governor, of unleashing an "assault" on unions in pushing emergency legislation that would change future collective-bargaining agreements that affect most public employees, including teachers.
This is from Fox News of 25 February: When candidate Obama was campaigning in South Carolina in 2007, he said he was proud to wear the “union label” and that if workers were denied rights to organize or collectively bargain when he was elected, “I'll put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself, I'll will walk on that picket line with you as president of the United States of America.”
It seems from the former quote that the president recognized the necessity, according to his philosophy, of doing what he promised in the second quote. Either he misspoke (politicians never lie) in one or both of those quotes, or he simply didn’t mean what he said, actually misspeaking (but not lying, of course). In any case, he was not seen, whether in comfortable shoes or not, walking a picket/protester line in Wisconsin. Words have a way of coming back to haunt.
Obviously, Obama should have said absolutely nothing with respect to the Wisconsin affair. In South Carolina, he clearly was pandering, often called campaigning, wherein the truth is actually not expected in presidential politics. However, a lie is a lie is a lie.
In foreign affairs, the president would have done well to say nothing recently. He decided that Egyptian President Mubarak should leave office, called him on the phone to tell him so, and then sent an emissary to make sure Mubarak understood Obama’s edict. The emissary disgreed publicly with the president after he had arrived on the scene and observed the actual facts.
Mubarak did leave office eventually (not just when the prez told him to) but not because of Obama’s edict; rather, he got out of Dodge because his army would not be expected to fire on fellow Egyptians. Egypt now is in turmoil, with the latest fad being a monstrous effort to drive Christians from the country. There’s no significant governmental structure and chaos will prevail. Obama would have been better off to keep his mouth shut. Ditto for State Secretary (rubber stamp) Clinton, both of whom tried to run another country’s government.
Or…take the case of Libya. It took a while as people died in the streets (was Obama on a lengthy learning curve?) but finally Obama told Libyan strongman Qadaffi to make haste and take a powder. Qaddafi demurred, knowing that in his rule the army and hired mercenaries WOULD fire on Libyans, thus making Obama’s edict worthless and a subject of ridicule throughout the world.
This would not necessarily be the case if President Obama had done anything to back up his edict to Qaddafi. There was much talk of a no-fly-zone and this was even approved by the Arab League, amounting to making war on Libya. Obama certainly was not prepared to do that and so sanctions have been put in place instead, as if they mean anything.
The president hasn’t been as feckless as the French government, which recognized officially an opposition “government,” knowing full well that it wouldn’t lift a finger to help that group of insurgents. The fact remains, however, that he has talked the walk but will not walk the walk, not least because this country will not stand for another Middle East dustup. Obviously, he should have kept his mouth shut.
The president’s words about unionists and collective bargaining meant nothing. His words concerning both Mubarak and Qaddafi meant nothing. In none of these cases was he prepared to actually DO anything. Talk is cheap. But the greater truth is simply that there are times when there should be no talk at all, such as when no action is planned…or, when action IS planned. Most often, silence is golden.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Monday, March 14, 2011
Legislators & Unions
The “Wisconsin Affair” held and holds some valuable lessons. Perhaps the most astounding one happened last November when the voters managed to place the legislature (both houses) and governorship in the hands of republicans. They even sent the first republican in 18 years to the U.S. Senate, replacing ultra-liberal Russ Feingold, about as far-left an operator as there is.
The state, like most states and the U.S government, as well, is deep into deficit problems, needing more than $3 billion to break even. The voters obviously were tired of the “same old same old,” so they threw the bums out. This meant that the majority expected some drastic measures to be taken since only drastic measures, such as significant cuts in spending and government costs, could save the day.
As expected, the Wisconsin lower house passed and sent to the Wisconsin Senate legislation that involved fiscal matters among other things but was unpalatable to the Senate democrats, a considerable minority of just 14. Instead of contending for their side in the Senate, the democrats simply left the state, bivouacing in neighboring Illinois, never mind that they were deserting the jobs to which they had been elected. This is another lesson – legislating by nullification since any bill involving money could not be passed without a member of the opposing party being present.
One wonders how long the democrat senators expected to hold out, thus tying up all budgetary legislation. Sooner or later, they would be compelled to participate but seemed too dense to understand this…thus another lesson, to wit, that idiots can be elected to public office.
Labor Unions are the darling of the Democrat Party and with both huge amounts of money and sweat equity routinely buy the legislators and legislation needed to make them happy. The instant legislation gutted most of the collective bargaining under which the state and unions had done business (and monkey-business) for decades, thus losing for the unions the golden goose that had propelled their members to far greater wages and perks even dreamed of by workers in the private sector.
Elections are held in order to effect what the voters want. In November, the voters spoke but the unionists couldn’t believe anyone would touch their sacred cow – collective bargaining, though not all states have it. Under this system, employees can strike if they don’t get their way, thus shutting down any part of government they wish. Most Wisconsin workers are not unionized and apparently saw they had become the golden goose, supporting what amounted to a legislative oligarchy and preferred class.
The lesson the protesters (government workers, including school-teachers) seem not to have learned is that anything that is awarded by government can be reformed or even nullified. Collective bargaining had been in effect through legislation for decades until the greed of both legislators and union-workers made it into the tail that wagged the dog. The voters had had enough. One only has to examine the wages, retirement ages, pension plans and health benefits in probably all states to understand why.
This is from the Wall Street Journal of 25 February (Robert M. Costrell): “The average Milwaukee public-school teacher salary is $56,500 [for 10 months], but with benefits the total package is $100,005, according to the manager of financial planning for Milwaukee public schools.” Mr. Costrell broke down the whole system, completely as a result of collective bargaining, and it included such things as the teacher paying nothing at all into his own retirement plan (1996 collective bargaining). The state also pays another 4.2% into the retirement plan (1982 collective bargaining). Government employees pay nothing into their health plans, and the government pays half of costs on the dental side, as well. Because of similar plans, teachers in many states retire in their fifties, take new jobs and build up more retirement benefits.
The most valuable lesson to be learned, however, has to do with the mob-mentality of the protesters. The hate-speech used was a good example of what the president has referred to in recent times as the reason for inculcating a more civil discourse. When the protesters and the bloggers called Governor Walker a nazi, they merely made themselves look stupid. When they took over the state capitol building for days, bidding fair to make it into a pig sty, they appeared coarse, crude.
This mob-mentality is scary. One wondered when its members, probably the best remunerated state workers in the whole country, would start burning cars and torch buildings. Millions of people in this country would give virtually anything to work for Wisconsin government. Labor unions are important in the private sector since they actually represent union workers, but in Wisconsin the legislature, bought fair and square by the unions, represents the union workers, and the state’s coffers are ready for legislative plunder 24/7. Everybody else can eat cake.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
The state, like most states and the U.S government, as well, is deep into deficit problems, needing more than $3 billion to break even. The voters obviously were tired of the “same old same old,” so they threw the bums out. This meant that the majority expected some drastic measures to be taken since only drastic measures, such as significant cuts in spending and government costs, could save the day.
As expected, the Wisconsin lower house passed and sent to the Wisconsin Senate legislation that involved fiscal matters among other things but was unpalatable to the Senate democrats, a considerable minority of just 14. Instead of contending for their side in the Senate, the democrats simply left the state, bivouacing in neighboring Illinois, never mind that they were deserting the jobs to which they had been elected. This is another lesson – legislating by nullification since any bill involving money could not be passed without a member of the opposing party being present.
One wonders how long the democrat senators expected to hold out, thus tying up all budgetary legislation. Sooner or later, they would be compelled to participate but seemed too dense to understand this…thus another lesson, to wit, that idiots can be elected to public office.
Labor Unions are the darling of the Democrat Party and with both huge amounts of money and sweat equity routinely buy the legislators and legislation needed to make them happy. The instant legislation gutted most of the collective bargaining under which the state and unions had done business (and monkey-business) for decades, thus losing for the unions the golden goose that had propelled their members to far greater wages and perks even dreamed of by workers in the private sector.
Elections are held in order to effect what the voters want. In November, the voters spoke but the unionists couldn’t believe anyone would touch their sacred cow – collective bargaining, though not all states have it. Under this system, employees can strike if they don’t get their way, thus shutting down any part of government they wish. Most Wisconsin workers are not unionized and apparently saw they had become the golden goose, supporting what amounted to a legislative oligarchy and preferred class.
The lesson the protesters (government workers, including school-teachers) seem not to have learned is that anything that is awarded by government can be reformed or even nullified. Collective bargaining had been in effect through legislation for decades until the greed of both legislators and union-workers made it into the tail that wagged the dog. The voters had had enough. One only has to examine the wages, retirement ages, pension plans and health benefits in probably all states to understand why.
This is from the Wall Street Journal of 25 February (Robert M. Costrell): “The average Milwaukee public-school teacher salary is $56,500 [for 10 months], but with benefits the total package is $100,005, according to the manager of financial planning for Milwaukee public schools.” Mr. Costrell broke down the whole system, completely as a result of collective bargaining, and it included such things as the teacher paying nothing at all into his own retirement plan (1996 collective bargaining). The state also pays another 4.2% into the retirement plan (1982 collective bargaining). Government employees pay nothing into their health plans, and the government pays half of costs on the dental side, as well. Because of similar plans, teachers in many states retire in their fifties, take new jobs and build up more retirement benefits.
The most valuable lesson to be learned, however, has to do with the mob-mentality of the protesters. The hate-speech used was a good example of what the president has referred to in recent times as the reason for inculcating a more civil discourse. When the protesters and the bloggers called Governor Walker a nazi, they merely made themselves look stupid. When they took over the state capitol building for days, bidding fair to make it into a pig sty, they appeared coarse, crude.
This mob-mentality is scary. One wondered when its members, probably the best remunerated state workers in the whole country, would start burning cars and torch buildings. Millions of people in this country would give virtually anything to work for Wisconsin government. Labor unions are important in the private sector since they actually represent union workers, but in Wisconsin the legislature, bought fair and square by the unions, represents the union workers, and the state’s coffers are ready for legislative plunder 24/7. Everybody else can eat cake.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Tuesday, March 08, 2011
DNC Memorandum #22
From the office of the chairman, 08 March 2011
***Apologies for neglecting to forward a memorandum during February! Since it was Black History Month a memorandum would have been unseemly especially since it would have pointed to the fact that African Americans support democrats, especially the president, no matter any position, though they might have a problem with his latest position, to wit, that men may marry men in holy matrimony and start their families. Most Americans, acting through their legislatures in both the Constitution and Statute areas, disapprove of this but are simply too unsophisticated to understand the president’s brilliance. However, this is a subject best left alone if possible since a redneck may ask you a stupid question such as one having to do with how two men conceive and bring forth a child. If that happens, “cloning” is an absolute no-no. Beyond that, you’re on your own BUT under no circumstances quote what the president said about marriage during his campaign. After all, some things – even convictions – have to be sacrificed when saving the country from vicious republicans, an absolute non-negotiable.
***Be advised that Jay Carney is the new spokesman for the president. Robert Glibs…er, Gibbs (little joke there, for the last time) has joined the president’s campaign team and so will continue to give credence to the term “uh” as virtually sacrosanct (“holy” for recent Harvard grads). Carney has yet to escape the same “uh” worship but, it is at least hoped, will work toward speaking in complete sentences. If you find Carney’s remarks to be unfathomable (“impossible to comprehend,” for recent Yalies, even skull-and-bones), don’t worry because as of now they are. Please check the media carefully to see what he says, what he means, and whether or not he means anything, the goal being smoke-and-mirrors very often in holding press conferences. Give Carney some slack because he is moving from the same job for Vice President Biden, where he was taxed mightily in explaining why “jobs” is a three-letter word and why “fluffernutter,” Biden’s term for everything John Edwards said in 2008, is not in the dictionary.
***With regard to same-sex marriage, the president has decided not to institute this arrangement by executive order, not that he feels he can’t overrule the Congress, Courts and state laws, but because it’s easier to simply ignore these entities. In other words, Attorney General Holder has been instructed not to represent (“defend,” for Princeton grads) the United States in any Court wherein a suit concerning this matter is brought. This will automatically make same-sex marriage legal as a federal matter by default unless and until the Court decides differently. Holder can bring suits (offense) against states that fail to authorize same-sex marriage, just as he has brought suit against Arizona for carrying out federal statutes vis-à-vis immigration. The president is also considering an executive order to set up a commission to study the viability of other types of marriage, such as including three spouses (or more…who’s counting?). He has requested that the DNC submit a red/yellow/black/white paper concerning this matter, but that marriage with a pet is definitely not to be considered, notwithstanding the position of Regulatory Czar Sunstein that pets should have access to lawyers.
***It needs to be made plain in all of your Town-Hall clambakes that the president has not changed his mind about shutting down Guantanamo and trying its clients in U.S. Courts, the clear implication being that Gitmo will never be closed since trying the terrorists there will take many years and decades more keeping the guilty out of circulation, especially since few, if any, countries will accept these murderers. He blames the Congress for his problem since it refused to buy him a prison in Illinois and even made it plain to Holder that they will not be tried anywhere in the U.S. As commander-in-chief, the president can shut down Gitmo at any time but has decided against such action until 2013. The gates can then be opened and the terrorists be given their rights. Fidel Castro has made it plain to the state department that the gates on Cuba’s side will be welded shut in the meantime.
***Be advised that the president has decided to soften all criticism of coal for now. Even though the best brains in the land have agreed that manmade global warming is a hoax, the president promised in 2008 to make carbon-capping so expensive that coal-mining would be bankrupted and intends to keep his word. However, the Middle East crises might do a better job of bankrupting everybody by making gas so expensive that people will be unable to move around…translated, unable to go to work and thus dependent upon the state for everything, the aim of this administration. This amounts to a much better tax upon the people, without the hassle of fighting the Tea Partiers over coal. Rumors that the president has e-mailed Qaddafi his appreciation are untrue and Carney has informed the press that he will not do it again.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
***Apologies for neglecting to forward a memorandum during February! Since it was Black History Month a memorandum would have been unseemly especially since it would have pointed to the fact that African Americans support democrats, especially the president, no matter any position, though they might have a problem with his latest position, to wit, that men may marry men in holy matrimony and start their families. Most Americans, acting through their legislatures in both the Constitution and Statute areas, disapprove of this but are simply too unsophisticated to understand the president’s brilliance. However, this is a subject best left alone if possible since a redneck may ask you a stupid question such as one having to do with how two men conceive and bring forth a child. If that happens, “cloning” is an absolute no-no. Beyond that, you’re on your own BUT under no circumstances quote what the president said about marriage during his campaign. After all, some things – even convictions – have to be sacrificed when saving the country from vicious republicans, an absolute non-negotiable.
***Be advised that Jay Carney is the new spokesman for the president. Robert Glibs…er, Gibbs (little joke there, for the last time) has joined the president’s campaign team and so will continue to give credence to the term “uh” as virtually sacrosanct (“holy” for recent Harvard grads). Carney has yet to escape the same “uh” worship but, it is at least hoped, will work toward speaking in complete sentences. If you find Carney’s remarks to be unfathomable (“impossible to comprehend,” for recent Yalies, even skull-and-bones), don’t worry because as of now they are. Please check the media carefully to see what he says, what he means, and whether or not he means anything, the goal being smoke-and-mirrors very often in holding press conferences. Give Carney some slack because he is moving from the same job for Vice President Biden, where he was taxed mightily in explaining why “jobs” is a three-letter word and why “fluffernutter,” Biden’s term for everything John Edwards said in 2008, is not in the dictionary.
***With regard to same-sex marriage, the president has decided not to institute this arrangement by executive order, not that he feels he can’t overrule the Congress, Courts and state laws, but because it’s easier to simply ignore these entities. In other words, Attorney General Holder has been instructed not to represent (“defend,” for Princeton grads) the United States in any Court wherein a suit concerning this matter is brought. This will automatically make same-sex marriage legal as a federal matter by default unless and until the Court decides differently. Holder can bring suits (offense) against states that fail to authorize same-sex marriage, just as he has brought suit against Arizona for carrying out federal statutes vis-à-vis immigration. The president is also considering an executive order to set up a commission to study the viability of other types of marriage, such as including three spouses (or more…who’s counting?). He has requested that the DNC submit a red/yellow/black/white paper concerning this matter, but that marriage with a pet is definitely not to be considered, notwithstanding the position of Regulatory Czar Sunstein that pets should have access to lawyers.
***It needs to be made plain in all of your Town-Hall clambakes that the president has not changed his mind about shutting down Guantanamo and trying its clients in U.S. Courts, the clear implication being that Gitmo will never be closed since trying the terrorists there will take many years and decades more keeping the guilty out of circulation, especially since few, if any, countries will accept these murderers. He blames the Congress for his problem since it refused to buy him a prison in Illinois and even made it plain to Holder that they will not be tried anywhere in the U.S. As commander-in-chief, the president can shut down Gitmo at any time but has decided against such action until 2013. The gates can then be opened and the terrorists be given their rights. Fidel Castro has made it plain to the state department that the gates on Cuba’s side will be welded shut in the meantime.
***Be advised that the president has decided to soften all criticism of coal for now. Even though the best brains in the land have agreed that manmade global warming is a hoax, the president promised in 2008 to make carbon-capping so expensive that coal-mining would be bankrupted and intends to keep his word. However, the Middle East crises might do a better job of bankrupting everybody by making gas so expensive that people will be unable to move around…translated, unable to go to work and thus dependent upon the state for everything, the aim of this administration. This amounts to a much better tax upon the people, without the hassle of fighting the Tea Partiers over coal. Rumors that the president has e-mailed Qaddafi his appreciation are untrue and Carney has informed the press that he will not do it again.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Saturday, March 05, 2011
No Libyan Responsibility
Incredibly, supposedly responsible people like Senator McCain are suggesting that the U.S. establish Libya as a no-fly zone, seemingly believing that the inculcation of such a zone would be a relatively simple matter. Defense Secretary Gates, obviously not in favor of such an action, has explained in a Congressional hearing the serious ramifications of doing this, namely, that to do so would require taking out Libya’s air-defense system on the ground, another way of affirming such as an act of war.
Other officials are suggesting the same thing, caterwauling over the fact that strongman Qaddafi’s military and mercenaries are killing insurgent Libyans. What do they expect him to do in light of the fact that he’s protecting his own skin, not to mention retaining the power he has exerted for more than 40 years? These same officials seem not to realize that Iraqis (including military/police forces) have been killing each other by the thousands for the last eight years, with the U.S. unable to do anything significant about it, though having up to 150,000 troops at a time there since 2003.
This is not to say there shouldn’t be concern over the Libyans’ situation. It is to say that the U.S. is already invested too heavily in military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan to take on what would be a fight against a nation posing no threat to the U.S. Even if the UN or NATO should approve such action (not likely), practically the whole responsibility for what would be war would devolve upon this country. Neither France, Germany, nor England would want any part of this fight.
The Libyan situation is nothing like Afghanistan or Iraq, actually clear and present threats to the world when this country entered into the current wars. Afghanistan clearly harbored the terrorists responsible for 9/11 and the best intelligence agencies in the world agreed that Saddam had WMD in Iraq in 2002. There was reason for those actions by this country, but no such similar reason applies in the case of Libya, and most certainly not as a unilateral action. This nation, hopefully, has finally learned that it is not the world’s policeman.
The president probably should have kept his mouth shut, beginning with the uprising in Tunisia and certainly with respect to Egypt. Violence is now the order of the day in both places, not surprising since any kind of governmental structure was destroyed when the dictators were overthrown. Once the president speaks, he supplies false hopes having to do with aid from this country.
Reagan helped Afghanistan kick out the Russians in the 80s and Bush 41 helped the Kuwaitis kick out Saddam in the 90s, but in both cases the dustup involved countries invaded by other countries. The Middle East flare-ups amount to civil wars and this country would be ill-served messing in any of it. When people choose up sides and start killing each other, that’s nobody else’s business, as witness the U.S. Civil War.
It’s patently clear now that the radical Muslim agenda is to take over the world. Jihad will be waged in the streets, on battlefields, and through subversion/sabotage/terrorism throughout the world for the foreseeable future. In Europe and the U.S., the fight is taking the form of terrorism, many of its purveyors homegrown. In sheer numbers, the Muslims are taking over Europe, where the birth-rate vis-à-vis Muslims and Caucasians is heavily tilted toward Islamic control. Indeed, the birth-rate among whites is too small to maintain current percentages.
Thankfully, the Muslim population in the U.S. is relatively small and should be kept that way with respect to immigration. There are converts to Islam among those who believe themselves somehow disenfranchised, and these converts pose a risk, as has already been seen here and in Europe. Fighting suicide/homicide bombers is like fighting the Japanese kamikaze pilots in WWII. Those brainwashed young Japanese, though killed by the thousands, managed to kill Americans by the thousands…all in a cause that was known by Japanese leaders to be lost…just murdering for the sake of it.
Hopefully, cooler heads will prevail in Washington and keep this country from more entanglements in the Middle East. Whether right or not, Qaddafi blames al Qaeda for Libya’s problem. U.S. officials pooh-pooh this but it should be remembered that al Qaeda terrorists bombed a synagogue on the island of Djerba (only 160 miles from Tripoli), part of neighboring Tunisia, in April 2002, killing 21 people, mostly tourists from Germany and France. A word to the wise should be sufficient.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Other officials are suggesting the same thing, caterwauling over the fact that strongman Qaddafi’s military and mercenaries are killing insurgent Libyans. What do they expect him to do in light of the fact that he’s protecting his own skin, not to mention retaining the power he has exerted for more than 40 years? These same officials seem not to realize that Iraqis (including military/police forces) have been killing each other by the thousands for the last eight years, with the U.S. unable to do anything significant about it, though having up to 150,000 troops at a time there since 2003.
This is not to say there shouldn’t be concern over the Libyans’ situation. It is to say that the U.S. is already invested too heavily in military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan to take on what would be a fight against a nation posing no threat to the U.S. Even if the UN or NATO should approve such action (not likely), practically the whole responsibility for what would be war would devolve upon this country. Neither France, Germany, nor England would want any part of this fight.
The Libyan situation is nothing like Afghanistan or Iraq, actually clear and present threats to the world when this country entered into the current wars. Afghanistan clearly harbored the terrorists responsible for 9/11 and the best intelligence agencies in the world agreed that Saddam had WMD in Iraq in 2002. There was reason for those actions by this country, but no such similar reason applies in the case of Libya, and most certainly not as a unilateral action. This nation, hopefully, has finally learned that it is not the world’s policeman.
The president probably should have kept his mouth shut, beginning with the uprising in Tunisia and certainly with respect to Egypt. Violence is now the order of the day in both places, not surprising since any kind of governmental structure was destroyed when the dictators were overthrown. Once the president speaks, he supplies false hopes having to do with aid from this country.
Reagan helped Afghanistan kick out the Russians in the 80s and Bush 41 helped the Kuwaitis kick out Saddam in the 90s, but in both cases the dustup involved countries invaded by other countries. The Middle East flare-ups amount to civil wars and this country would be ill-served messing in any of it. When people choose up sides and start killing each other, that’s nobody else’s business, as witness the U.S. Civil War.
It’s patently clear now that the radical Muslim agenda is to take over the world. Jihad will be waged in the streets, on battlefields, and through subversion/sabotage/terrorism throughout the world for the foreseeable future. In Europe and the U.S., the fight is taking the form of terrorism, many of its purveyors homegrown. In sheer numbers, the Muslims are taking over Europe, where the birth-rate vis-à-vis Muslims and Caucasians is heavily tilted toward Islamic control. Indeed, the birth-rate among whites is too small to maintain current percentages.
Thankfully, the Muslim population in the U.S. is relatively small and should be kept that way with respect to immigration. There are converts to Islam among those who believe themselves somehow disenfranchised, and these converts pose a risk, as has already been seen here and in Europe. Fighting suicide/homicide bombers is like fighting the Japanese kamikaze pilots in WWII. Those brainwashed young Japanese, though killed by the thousands, managed to kill Americans by the thousands…all in a cause that was known by Japanese leaders to be lost…just murdering for the sake of it.
Hopefully, cooler heads will prevail in Washington and keep this country from more entanglements in the Middle East. Whether right or not, Qaddafi blames al Qaeda for Libya’s problem. U.S. officials pooh-pooh this but it should be remembered that al Qaeda terrorists bombed a synagogue on the island of Djerba (only 160 miles from Tripoli), part of neighboring Tunisia, in April 2002, killing 21 people, mostly tourists from Germany and France. A word to the wise should be sufficient.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Monday, February 28, 2011
Government & Labor Unions
The “Wisconsin Affair” centers around whether or not public-service employees should be availed of the collective bargaining process in the determining of their wages, perks, vacations, etc. The Wisconsin governor would have it that the unions should bargain on wages only, but wages have more to do with the cost of living than with the bargaining process. Actually then, at least in Wisconsin, it has to do with whether or not public-service employees should have the right to unionize.
Soon after President Reagan took office in the 1980s, the air-traffic-controllers called a strike and most workers walked off the job. Their leaders attempted to get them to return to work, most likely when they realized that the controllers had signed-on under the condition that they would not strike and that, whereas they’d probably been given some latitude before, such was not to be the case with Reagan, who simply said that if they didn’t return to work they had quit, not actually been fired.
Reagan made it stick, though the consensus seemed to be that the nation’s air-transportation system would grind to a halt or be damned by terrible accidents. Reagan demurred, insisting that new hires would take up the slack. Legally, he was correct and determined to see the law upheld, which was his sworn duty. The system returned to normal in a relatively short time and there were no serious accidents accruing to controller failure.
In another life, I was a member of a transportation union, a locomotive engineer. Should this put me on the side of the protesters in Wisconsin or on the side of the governor? The difference between me and the protesters is that I worked for a private company responsible to its shareholders, whereas the protesters work for state government. If I went on strike, other railroads took up the slack. If public-service workers strike, they shut down the state, including schools, law enforcement, fire protection, etc.
If all the railroaders in the nation go on strike the government simply puts a stop to it, just as Reagan did with the controllers, even though the railroaders work for private companies and the truckers could move stuff. In 1946 during a nationwide strike, President Truman (a labor-oriented democrat) appeared before Congress for permission to take-over the rails and run them using the army. At that point, the strike was settled.
The railroader or any other non-management worker has nothing but the union to stand between himself and his employer, which is mostly concerned with the bottom line and not the welfare of its workers, while in government employees are usually protected by everything from tenure to the merit systems to review boards. It’s extremely hard to fire a government worker without well-documented cause, and it’s hard even then. The media is filled almost daily with accounts of former government workers winning lawsuits against various governments…much of the time justifiably.
Wages and all perks in the private sector are negotiated by managements and labor unions. In government, such negotiations are conducted by the proper authorities and unions but are actually controlled by legislators who receive huge amounts of money from labor unions to do their bidding. In the private sector, unions have to understand that their companies must compete successfully with others in order to maintain jobs. In the government sector, there are deep pockets filled by the taxpayers and ripe for the picking. This is why employees in governments are now far ahead of their counterparts in the private sector with regard to both wages and benefits. Governments do not compete with anything for survival.
In Wisconsin, teaching salaries averaged $52,644 in 2009-10, according to the National Education Association, with most school districts offering benefits that range from health insurance to retirement plans. Median annual wages of kindergarten, elementary, middle, and secondary school teachers nationwide ranged from $47,100 to $51,180 in May 2008, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Dept. of Labor. In Kentucky, a teacher can retire after 25 years, draw the life-long pension, get another job and work out another pension. Where else can that kind of boondoggle be found?
This is not a brief against unions, only the suggestion that government-employees should never work under collective-bargaining protocols. They should never have the power to shut down any part of government and they should never be overpaid vis-à-vis the private sector, no matter how much they contribute to lawmakers in either dollars or sweat-equity.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Soon after President Reagan took office in the 1980s, the air-traffic-controllers called a strike and most workers walked off the job. Their leaders attempted to get them to return to work, most likely when they realized that the controllers had signed-on under the condition that they would not strike and that, whereas they’d probably been given some latitude before, such was not to be the case with Reagan, who simply said that if they didn’t return to work they had quit, not actually been fired.
Reagan made it stick, though the consensus seemed to be that the nation’s air-transportation system would grind to a halt or be damned by terrible accidents. Reagan demurred, insisting that new hires would take up the slack. Legally, he was correct and determined to see the law upheld, which was his sworn duty. The system returned to normal in a relatively short time and there were no serious accidents accruing to controller failure.
In another life, I was a member of a transportation union, a locomotive engineer. Should this put me on the side of the protesters in Wisconsin or on the side of the governor? The difference between me and the protesters is that I worked for a private company responsible to its shareholders, whereas the protesters work for state government. If I went on strike, other railroads took up the slack. If public-service workers strike, they shut down the state, including schools, law enforcement, fire protection, etc.
If all the railroaders in the nation go on strike the government simply puts a stop to it, just as Reagan did with the controllers, even though the railroaders work for private companies and the truckers could move stuff. In 1946 during a nationwide strike, President Truman (a labor-oriented democrat) appeared before Congress for permission to take-over the rails and run them using the army. At that point, the strike was settled.
The railroader or any other non-management worker has nothing but the union to stand between himself and his employer, which is mostly concerned with the bottom line and not the welfare of its workers, while in government employees are usually protected by everything from tenure to the merit systems to review boards. It’s extremely hard to fire a government worker without well-documented cause, and it’s hard even then. The media is filled almost daily with accounts of former government workers winning lawsuits against various governments…much of the time justifiably.
Wages and all perks in the private sector are negotiated by managements and labor unions. In government, such negotiations are conducted by the proper authorities and unions but are actually controlled by legislators who receive huge amounts of money from labor unions to do their bidding. In the private sector, unions have to understand that their companies must compete successfully with others in order to maintain jobs. In the government sector, there are deep pockets filled by the taxpayers and ripe for the picking. This is why employees in governments are now far ahead of their counterparts in the private sector with regard to both wages and benefits. Governments do not compete with anything for survival.
In Wisconsin, teaching salaries averaged $52,644 in 2009-10, according to the National Education Association, with most school districts offering benefits that range from health insurance to retirement plans. Median annual wages of kindergarten, elementary, middle, and secondary school teachers nationwide ranged from $47,100 to $51,180 in May 2008, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Dept. of Labor. In Kentucky, a teacher can retire after 25 years, draw the life-long pension, get another job and work out another pension. Where else can that kind of boondoggle be found?
This is not a brief against unions, only the suggestion that government-employees should never work under collective-bargaining protocols. They should never have the power to shut down any part of government and they should never be overpaid vis-à-vis the private sector, no matter how much they contribute to lawmakers in either dollars or sweat-equity.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Civility...Political Correctness...NUTS!
The president has made much of civility lately, mostly in the area of speech. Even though he publicly sought “asses to kick” in the BP mess last summer and has affirmed that some policemen (in this case a white policeman, particularly) act stupidly, he has seen the need for other people, at least, to observe civility, defined as “civilized conduct.” Civilized is defined as “characterized by taste, refinement, or restraint.” Civility, then, is conduct characterized by taste, refinement, or restraint.
Speech, as affected by civility, would not involve remarks that are crude, racist, demeaning, vulgar, profane, etc., since such attributes, at least as judged by most folks, would not indicate civility, never mind the president’s description of the Pennsylvanians in 2008 as sort of gun-toting bible-thumpers on the lookout for illegal immigrants, and felt the need in Philadelphia to identify the “typical white person.” One waits with bated breath for him, in fairness to all, to identify the “typical black person” or the “typical person of any other color,” but so far he has demurred…civility, doncha know?
The president’s taste and refinement were exhibited recently during the Egyptian uprising when he phoned President Mubarak and simply told him to get out of Dodge and even sent a personal emissary over to tell him the same thing (not armed, of course, Wyatt Earp style). Said emissary went over, had the conversation, then told the world that Mubarak should stay the course, sort of fight it out at the OK Corral. The crowds won the fight and celebrated by raping the nearest typical white girl (CBS reporter), proving their taste and refinement to be beyond excellent since Prexy Bush had said he was with the people all the way.
Earlier, Obama was also with the Tunisian people all the way but probably didn’t phone up ben Ali, the Tunisian ruler, and tell him to take a hike…though there’s no way to know that. Ben Ali wound up in Saudi Arabia, where Obama did a spine-threatening 90-degree genuflection before the Saudi head honcho on his famous “apology tour” of 2009. Maybe he persuaded the Arabs to take in poor ben Ali, but in exhibiting restraint, civility-wise, the prez hasn’t requested, along with the “people,” that ben Ali be extradited back to the scene of his crimes…or has he? Who knows?
To his credit, Obama doesn’t seem to get into the Iranian affairs much, exhibiting the penultimate in civil grace and restraint, notwithstanding that he should be expected to be with the Iranian protesters all the way, especially since they die by the sword for just…well, protesting. Presumably, he hasn’t phoned Iranian President Ahmadinejad and advised him that the sands of Cancun are nice at this time of year and that there are plenty of mosques there…an exhibition of taste and refinement, sort of reaching out to maybe the “typical beheader.”
After all, Obama’s said he’s with the protesters of Wisconsin in their fight with their governor, though he hasn’t phoned the governor and suggested a new line of work that doesn’t involve capital gains taxes. During the campaign, he said he would march with the union folks but so far has probably had schedule conflicts…or maybe a game of HORSE with the guys. Anyway, who wants to march in Madison in the wintertime? Civility involves restraint, after all.
One would expect an uncouth, unrefined president to phone-up Qaddafi and tell him to either flee or the marines are coming to the Barbary Coast. In a dazzling display of civility, Obama has not meddled and suggested to that butcher that he avoid a “Little Big Horn,” where the “people,” with whom Obama identifies, are being slaughtered in the streets. Back in the day, President Reagan showed his civil restraint by bombing Qaddafi”s bedroom. Earlier in the 80s, Calypso Louie Farrakhan and his sidekick, the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, had visited Qadaffi’s harems, so maybe that influenced Barack Hussein. Or, maybe it was the ghost of Jimmy Carter’s brother, Beer Barrel Billy, who visited Libya in the 70s and actually weaseled a loan from Qaddafi.
On the home front, Obama has shown his civility by completely reversing himself from campaign mode (called deceit by some un-civil folks, citing taste and refinement vis-à-vis lying) and reckoning that…yep…marriage is not just a “one-woman-one-man” thing after all, never mind the DOM Act of the 90s. Taste and refinement now condone two men or two women “getting it on” in strange ways, using their body parts for other than their intended uses for intake and exhaust, not to mention finagling governmental freebies. He claimed this to be his personal interpretation of the un-civil Constitution but has shied away since November from his post-inaugural comment regarding disagreements by saying, “We won.”
Some say the prez couldn’t pressure Qaddafi too much lest Americans be taken hostage but that didn’t seem to matter concerning Mubarak. This is what Qaddafi said in his famous (infamous) speech at the UN in 2009, “We are content and happy if Obama can stay forever as president of the United States.” That might apply to the present situation…or not but, thankfully, term limits are in place.
Note: President Obama finally got around to suggesting that Qaddafi, also, get out of Dodge. Neither he nor Mubarak has, of course, and probably won’t so look for fireworks, at least in Libya. The Muslim Brotherhood is advancing its cause in Egypt…so look out, world!
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Speech, as affected by civility, would not involve remarks that are crude, racist, demeaning, vulgar, profane, etc., since such attributes, at least as judged by most folks, would not indicate civility, never mind the president’s description of the Pennsylvanians in 2008 as sort of gun-toting bible-thumpers on the lookout for illegal immigrants, and felt the need in Philadelphia to identify the “typical white person.” One waits with bated breath for him, in fairness to all, to identify the “typical black person” or the “typical person of any other color,” but so far he has demurred…civility, doncha know?
The president’s taste and refinement were exhibited recently during the Egyptian uprising when he phoned President Mubarak and simply told him to get out of Dodge and even sent a personal emissary over to tell him the same thing (not armed, of course, Wyatt Earp style). Said emissary went over, had the conversation, then told the world that Mubarak should stay the course, sort of fight it out at the OK Corral. The crowds won the fight and celebrated by raping the nearest typical white girl (CBS reporter), proving their taste and refinement to be beyond excellent since Prexy Bush had said he was with the people all the way.
Earlier, Obama was also with the Tunisian people all the way but probably didn’t phone up ben Ali, the Tunisian ruler, and tell him to take a hike…though there’s no way to know that. Ben Ali wound up in Saudi Arabia, where Obama did a spine-threatening 90-degree genuflection before the Saudi head honcho on his famous “apology tour” of 2009. Maybe he persuaded the Arabs to take in poor ben Ali, but in exhibiting restraint, civility-wise, the prez hasn’t requested, along with the “people,” that ben Ali be extradited back to the scene of his crimes…or has he? Who knows?
To his credit, Obama doesn’t seem to get into the Iranian affairs much, exhibiting the penultimate in civil grace and restraint, notwithstanding that he should be expected to be with the Iranian protesters all the way, especially since they die by the sword for just…well, protesting. Presumably, he hasn’t phoned Iranian President Ahmadinejad and advised him that the sands of Cancun are nice at this time of year and that there are plenty of mosques there…an exhibition of taste and refinement, sort of reaching out to maybe the “typical beheader.”
After all, Obama’s said he’s with the protesters of Wisconsin in their fight with their governor, though he hasn’t phoned the governor and suggested a new line of work that doesn’t involve capital gains taxes. During the campaign, he said he would march with the union folks but so far has probably had schedule conflicts…or maybe a game of HORSE with the guys. Anyway, who wants to march in Madison in the wintertime? Civility involves restraint, after all.
One would expect an uncouth, unrefined president to phone-up Qaddafi and tell him to either flee or the marines are coming to the Barbary Coast. In a dazzling display of civility, Obama has not meddled and suggested to that butcher that he avoid a “Little Big Horn,” where the “people,” with whom Obama identifies, are being slaughtered in the streets. Back in the day, President Reagan showed his civil restraint by bombing Qaddafi”s bedroom. Earlier in the 80s, Calypso Louie Farrakhan and his sidekick, the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, had visited Qadaffi’s harems, so maybe that influenced Barack Hussein. Or, maybe it was the ghost of Jimmy Carter’s brother, Beer Barrel Billy, who visited Libya in the 70s and actually weaseled a loan from Qaddafi.
On the home front, Obama has shown his civility by completely reversing himself from campaign mode (called deceit by some un-civil folks, citing taste and refinement vis-à-vis lying) and reckoning that…yep…marriage is not just a “one-woman-one-man” thing after all, never mind the DOM Act of the 90s. Taste and refinement now condone two men or two women “getting it on” in strange ways, using their body parts for other than their intended uses for intake and exhaust, not to mention finagling governmental freebies. He claimed this to be his personal interpretation of the un-civil Constitution but has shied away since November from his post-inaugural comment regarding disagreements by saying, “We won.”
Some say the prez couldn’t pressure Qaddafi too much lest Americans be taken hostage but that didn’t seem to matter concerning Mubarak. This is what Qaddafi said in his famous (infamous) speech at the UN in 2009, “We are content and happy if Obama can stay forever as president of the United States.” That might apply to the present situation…or not but, thankfully, term limits are in place.
Note: President Obama finally got around to suggesting that Qaddafi, also, get out of Dodge. Neither he nor Mubarak has, of course, and probably won’t so look for fireworks, at least in Libya. The Muslim Brotherhood is advancing its cause in Egypt…so look out, world!
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Ahmadinejad, Mahdi & Dajjal
There’s been much in the media lately with regard to the 12th Imam or Mahdi, particularly since Iranian President Ahmadinejad has made it a focal point of his otherworldly responsibilities. The Mahdi is supposedly the reincarnation of a former descendent of Mohammad who was buried in a well or something as a child before having the opportunity to become the head Islamic honcho (12th imam) worldwide. There are a number of strains of Islam but the Sunnis and Shiites are the largest, though there are different strains even within them. They fight and kill each other as a matter of course, the internecine warfare having begun in 656 just 24 years after the death of Mohammad.
The Mahdi, according to at least Shiite eschatology (Ahmadinejad’s) will rule for an infinite time but only after there has been a cataclysmic and essentially worldwide war with much bloodshed. In this respect, the Mahdi is the Islamic counterpoint to Jesus Christ, who, according to the Holy Bible, will appear roughly toward the end of what is called the seven-year Great Tribulation, marked by 3.5 years apiece of relative peace and unmitigated chaos, respectively, during which the war known as the bloody Battle of Armageddon (probably in what is now Israel) will take place, at the end of which will begin a thousand-year rule of Christ.
There are other parallels vis-à-vis Islam and Christianity. According to the Shiite version, Mahdi will come only after the great war necessitating his return has been conducted by an evil character called the Dajjal, who will in turn be dispatched for his trouble by the Mahdi as he begins his infinite reign. According to the view held by most evangelical Christians, Armageddon will eventuate from the work of AntiChrist, a fearless and evil leader who will be dispatched by Jesus Christ leading an army of the heavenly host. Since Mohammed (early seventh century) co-opted scripture in creating the Koran, this parallel is easy to understand, actually just a form plagiarism.
Dajjal and AntiChrist have different origins. Dajjal will be a one-eyed man with a horrible scar on his forehead and his blind eye appearing as a swollen globule. He will arise more or less on his own, probably claim to be the Mahdi, raise his army and make war. AntiChrist will achieve notoriety in some way and will then be encouraged to form an army and wage war, presumably everyone else in the world against the Israelites. Some folks believe AntiChrist is already in existence and actually speculate about his identity.
Some Muslims believe the one-eyed business is merely symbolic of the decadent West as Dajjal (that one-eye on the back of a dollar bill), what with the virtual glorification of dancing, drunkenness, nudity, homosexuality, lewdness of every sort and their spread throughout the world. Some Christians may perceive of AntiChrist as a collection of nations (UN-sponsored, perhaps) that cooperate in fomenting Armageddon. Most folks in both groups are likely to believe in the personages, however, a more literal approach, and some Muslims believe them to be the same.
This explains why Ahmadinejad is so dangerous. He has already prepared the “throne” for the Mahdi, the Jamkaran mosque on the outskirts of Qom, a virtual Shiite holy city some 92 miles south of Tehran. What he desperately needs in order to bring on the Dajjal is, of course, a candidate for the job, and a setting in which the great conflagration can take place. He understands that the earliest Muslim operator (hopefully himself) to bring on the final destruction will get the prize, not of being Dajjal but of fulfilling his destiny as the enabler. One remembers that strange 2005 speech at the UN, in which he was somehow “transported” at its end, feeling, as he explained to a cleric, the hand of God (Allah) entrancing world leaders. He is, if anything, inordinately devout in his faith, sanguinary though it is.
Ironically, the only candidate currently might be Mullah Muhammad Omar, leader of the Taliban and former leader of Afghanistan, who is probably now hiding in the mountains on the Afghan-Pakistan border. Omar was a fearless leader in the war eventuating in the expulsion of Russia from Afghanistan in 1989, was wounded a number of times and in the process was blinded in one eye. He is said to also have a scar on his forehead. There are few pictures of the reclusive Omar, who never entered the capital of Kabul while he ruled the country from his home-base in Kandahar.
Omar has also been designated as the “Commander of the Faithful,” the first such in a thousand years, or the second caliph, or “Amirul Mu’mineen,” presumably the top Muslim in the world. Problem: Omar is a Sunni; therefore, probably not acceptable to Ahmadinejad, besides having no military base at the moment, instead, hiding out in caves.
The thing Ahmadinejad has going for him at present in the interest of fomenting the needed conflagration to bring on the Mahdi is the widespread Muslim chaos throughout the Middle East and Near-East North African countries. As the peoples rise up against their governments they kill each other but also vent their spleens upon the West and provide the atmosphere collectively conducive for attempting to wipe out Israel, the object of their greatest hate and the entity Ahmadinejad has sworn to “erase.” Such an action would plunge the entire world into war, Ahmadinejad’s greatest hope…thus the intro of the 12th imam at its bloody end. In the Mahdi’s reign, infidels (known as dhimmis – all non-Muslims) will pay the tax (be slaves) or die and all Jews will be annihilated.
Sound crazy? Of course! But Ahmadinejad and tens of millions of Muslims believe this, and they are probably far more fervent in their faith than most Christians are in theirs, at least in the West. He may believe in the symbolic Dajjal, in which case all he needs is the setting, now perhaps in place as much of his part of the world is aflame.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
The Mahdi, according to at least Shiite eschatology (Ahmadinejad’s) will rule for an infinite time but only after there has been a cataclysmic and essentially worldwide war with much bloodshed. In this respect, the Mahdi is the Islamic counterpoint to Jesus Christ, who, according to the Holy Bible, will appear roughly toward the end of what is called the seven-year Great Tribulation, marked by 3.5 years apiece of relative peace and unmitigated chaos, respectively, during which the war known as the bloody Battle of Armageddon (probably in what is now Israel) will take place, at the end of which will begin a thousand-year rule of Christ.
There are other parallels vis-à-vis Islam and Christianity. According to the Shiite version, Mahdi will come only after the great war necessitating his return has been conducted by an evil character called the Dajjal, who will in turn be dispatched for his trouble by the Mahdi as he begins his infinite reign. According to the view held by most evangelical Christians, Armageddon will eventuate from the work of AntiChrist, a fearless and evil leader who will be dispatched by Jesus Christ leading an army of the heavenly host. Since Mohammed (early seventh century) co-opted scripture in creating the Koran, this parallel is easy to understand, actually just a form plagiarism.
Dajjal and AntiChrist have different origins. Dajjal will be a one-eyed man with a horrible scar on his forehead and his blind eye appearing as a swollen globule. He will arise more or less on his own, probably claim to be the Mahdi, raise his army and make war. AntiChrist will achieve notoriety in some way and will then be encouraged to form an army and wage war, presumably everyone else in the world against the Israelites. Some folks believe AntiChrist is already in existence and actually speculate about his identity.
Some Muslims believe the one-eyed business is merely symbolic of the decadent West as Dajjal (that one-eye on the back of a dollar bill), what with the virtual glorification of dancing, drunkenness, nudity, homosexuality, lewdness of every sort and their spread throughout the world. Some Christians may perceive of AntiChrist as a collection of nations (UN-sponsored, perhaps) that cooperate in fomenting Armageddon. Most folks in both groups are likely to believe in the personages, however, a more literal approach, and some Muslims believe them to be the same.
This explains why Ahmadinejad is so dangerous. He has already prepared the “throne” for the Mahdi, the Jamkaran mosque on the outskirts of Qom, a virtual Shiite holy city some 92 miles south of Tehran. What he desperately needs in order to bring on the Dajjal is, of course, a candidate for the job, and a setting in which the great conflagration can take place. He understands that the earliest Muslim operator (hopefully himself) to bring on the final destruction will get the prize, not of being Dajjal but of fulfilling his destiny as the enabler. One remembers that strange 2005 speech at the UN, in which he was somehow “transported” at its end, feeling, as he explained to a cleric, the hand of God (Allah) entrancing world leaders. He is, if anything, inordinately devout in his faith, sanguinary though it is.
Ironically, the only candidate currently might be Mullah Muhammad Omar, leader of the Taliban and former leader of Afghanistan, who is probably now hiding in the mountains on the Afghan-Pakistan border. Omar was a fearless leader in the war eventuating in the expulsion of Russia from Afghanistan in 1989, was wounded a number of times and in the process was blinded in one eye. He is said to also have a scar on his forehead. There are few pictures of the reclusive Omar, who never entered the capital of Kabul while he ruled the country from his home-base in Kandahar.
Omar has also been designated as the “Commander of the Faithful,” the first such in a thousand years, or the second caliph, or “Amirul Mu’mineen,” presumably the top Muslim in the world. Problem: Omar is a Sunni; therefore, probably not acceptable to Ahmadinejad, besides having no military base at the moment, instead, hiding out in caves.
The thing Ahmadinejad has going for him at present in the interest of fomenting the needed conflagration to bring on the Mahdi is the widespread Muslim chaos throughout the Middle East and Near-East North African countries. As the peoples rise up against their governments they kill each other but also vent their spleens upon the West and provide the atmosphere collectively conducive for attempting to wipe out Israel, the object of their greatest hate and the entity Ahmadinejad has sworn to “erase.” Such an action would plunge the entire world into war, Ahmadinejad’s greatest hope…thus the intro of the 12th imam at its bloody end. In the Mahdi’s reign, infidels (known as dhimmis – all non-Muslims) will pay the tax (be slaves) or die and all Jews will be annihilated.
Sound crazy? Of course! But Ahmadinejad and tens of millions of Muslims believe this, and they are probably far more fervent in their faith than most Christians are in theirs, at least in the West. He may believe in the symbolic Dajjal, in which case all he needs is the setting, now perhaps in place as much of his part of the world is aflame.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Unisex...An Unfair Advantage?
Just when one thinks the penultimate in public-school-education foolishness has been reached, such as distributing condoms to students while admitting they don’t always work and that abstinence is 100% effective but too old-fashioned even to consider, Iowa furnishes another example of why schools in this country are falling behind those in the rest of the world. Administrators appear to be idiots so why shouldn’t the products be…at least suspect?
Item: Girls are allowed to wrestle on what are essentially boys’ teams in Iowa. A potential champion (record of 35-4) recently defaulted on his way to an apparently excellent attempt at winning the crown in his weight division because he was being forced to wrestle a girl. He said it was a matter of conscience and faith, the former presumably because of the nature of things (men don’t purposefully hurt women or grab them in curious places, at least in public) and the latter because of his religious beliefs.
It’s doubtful that girls are allowed to play on high school football teams in Iowa for the obvious reason that they would be smashed. Strangely, the spectacle of a high school boy writhing with a high school girl (with their body parts massaging each other in strange places) on a mat in front of screaming thousands (wrestling is big in Iowa) seems so weird as to be unbelievable. Political correctness, the zany abstract that is damning America these days, is running amok. Aren’t there any girls’ wrestling teams in Iowa?
Unisex is the darling of the generations more or less pseudo-birthed by the “baby boomers” back in the hippy-dippy 60s. This concept is responsible for much if not most of the rape problem (real or imagined) in the military these days. Genders should not be mixed in situations devoid of privacy, especially in the ages-17-28 crowd. Anyone with walking-around-sense knows this but that sense is not available to the Congress or the current president…or in Iowa’s education establishment.
The young man’s decision is easy to understand and would likely be held by at least 99% of other young men in the same situation, although, of course, the girls presumably had to overcome other boys to get to the state finals. Is there something in the water in Iowa? The decision hardest to understand is that of the girl’s father, who apparently is willing to have his daughter mauled by a boy – or vice versa – in a public place. Or…what would any mother think of having her daughter appear in such a spectacle…or a son body-slam a girl?
Can one expect in this enlightened age that the genders in high school and college will soon be mixed in all sports? Probably not! The first girl to receive a concussion in football or a broken leg sliding into second or a beaning at the plate or a hard left-hook breaking a jaw in what has up to now been considered a guys’ game, with the understanding that girls have the same competitive opportunities (Title 9) in their own groups, may well decide the question. Without any doubt, girls will be far more vulnerable than the boys to injury.
Should boys be allowed to play on girls’ basketball or softball teams in Iowa, assuming there are such teams? Would that be any different from allowing girls to wrestle boys? Of course not! The drive to make everyone equal to everyone else in every area, including gender, is wearing thin for the simple reason that the incorrigible differences (inequalities) are unmistakably apparent to anyone with a grain of common sense.
Gender-integrated military boot camps have been tried at least twice for combat training, first in the 1970s (Carter administration) and later in the 1990s (Clinton administration). In both cases, they had to be discontinued because men and women are not usually equally capable of the physical and emotional grind necessary to preparation for breaking things and killing people. Simple!
Family values are supposed to be important in Iowa…but one wonders. Any father who would allow – yea, even encourage – his daughter to be slammed around by a boy as a matter of public entertainment or for any other reason is either sick or dumb…maybe both.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Item: Girls are allowed to wrestle on what are essentially boys’ teams in Iowa. A potential champion (record of 35-4) recently defaulted on his way to an apparently excellent attempt at winning the crown in his weight division because he was being forced to wrestle a girl. He said it was a matter of conscience and faith, the former presumably because of the nature of things (men don’t purposefully hurt women or grab them in curious places, at least in public) and the latter because of his religious beliefs.
It’s doubtful that girls are allowed to play on high school football teams in Iowa for the obvious reason that they would be smashed. Strangely, the spectacle of a high school boy writhing with a high school girl (with their body parts massaging each other in strange places) on a mat in front of screaming thousands (wrestling is big in Iowa) seems so weird as to be unbelievable. Political correctness, the zany abstract that is damning America these days, is running amok. Aren’t there any girls’ wrestling teams in Iowa?
Unisex is the darling of the generations more or less pseudo-birthed by the “baby boomers” back in the hippy-dippy 60s. This concept is responsible for much if not most of the rape problem (real or imagined) in the military these days. Genders should not be mixed in situations devoid of privacy, especially in the ages-17-28 crowd. Anyone with walking-around-sense knows this but that sense is not available to the Congress or the current president…or in Iowa’s education establishment.
The young man’s decision is easy to understand and would likely be held by at least 99% of other young men in the same situation, although, of course, the girls presumably had to overcome other boys to get to the state finals. Is there something in the water in Iowa? The decision hardest to understand is that of the girl’s father, who apparently is willing to have his daughter mauled by a boy – or vice versa – in a public place. Or…what would any mother think of having her daughter appear in such a spectacle…or a son body-slam a girl?
Can one expect in this enlightened age that the genders in high school and college will soon be mixed in all sports? Probably not! The first girl to receive a concussion in football or a broken leg sliding into second or a beaning at the plate or a hard left-hook breaking a jaw in what has up to now been considered a guys’ game, with the understanding that girls have the same competitive opportunities (Title 9) in their own groups, may well decide the question. Without any doubt, girls will be far more vulnerable than the boys to injury.
Should boys be allowed to play on girls’ basketball or softball teams in Iowa, assuming there are such teams? Would that be any different from allowing girls to wrestle boys? Of course not! The drive to make everyone equal to everyone else in every area, including gender, is wearing thin for the simple reason that the incorrigible differences (inequalities) are unmistakably apparent to anyone with a grain of common sense.
Gender-integrated military boot camps have been tried at least twice for combat training, first in the 1970s (Carter administration) and later in the 1990s (Clinton administration). In both cases, they had to be discontinued because men and women are not usually equally capable of the physical and emotional grind necessary to preparation for breaking things and killing people. Simple!
Family values are supposed to be important in Iowa…but one wonders. Any father who would allow – yea, even encourage – his daughter to be slammed around by a boy as a matter of public entertainment or for any other reason is either sick or dumb…maybe both.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Friday, February 18, 2011
Ky. Legislative Social Engineering
The Kentucky House of Representatives has been busy with measures dealing with social change. HB 58, passed 94-0, would mandate that a device be attached to a DUI offender’s vehicle that would disallow the car-engine to start if the driver failed a sobriety breath-test embedded in the device, assuming the driver to be still sober enough to find and activate the device.
Sound like a good idea? Of course…but only if the driver and not a less-drunk passenger (or a dog) activates the device! The DUI threshold for tolerance in Kentucky is .08. Question: At what setting would the breathalyzer on the device indicate as safe – .04, .02, or maybe .07? After all, a driver pulled over by an officer is not a DUI candidate if he checks in at .07. Logically and legally, then, the limit would be at .07, virtually the same as the feared DUI mark.
That’s not good enough, especially since people should never drive if they have imbibed any amount of alcohol. The difference between being legally drunk and not drunk (.01), besides being infinitely small, means nothing to a family whose loved one is killed by a driver checking in at .07, making him unsusceptible to a DUI murder/manslaughter charge that can be lodged against a driver checking in at .08.
The breathalyzer device would be susceptible to tampering that could render it totally useless. Would the offending driver be required to submit his car for testing once a month, once a week…or ever? Is this covered in the bill? Radar devices used by the police have to be tested and calibrated periodically, lest the results not stand up in Court, so one would assume the bill allows for this. If not, it’s useless.
A much better punishment for a DUI offense would be the impoundment of the car. The offender couldn’t tamper with this solution and, more importantly, he wouldn’t be on the road in it again if it were impounded…say, for six months and simply confiscated for a second offense. Such a law would have actual teeth. Only a few instances of its implementation would probably be needed to sharply curtail drunk-driving.
HB 35 has been passed, allowing anyone over 18 years of age to acquire a protective order against whomever he/she deems a threat. These orders are currently aimed at “domestic violence” victims, defined as married couples, shack-up couples and those who have a child together.
Those categories cover all the bases as a domestic matter but now any 18-year-old can apparently petition the court for protection, just naming the person to be protected against, with no domestic connection. Imagine the extra effort and expense required of law enforcement to monitor what could be an act of revenge by a high school senior girl against the guy who drops her for another “lovely.”
This is social engineering gone amok. Why set the age-limit at 18? Why not 14, an age when a possible victim is far more vulnerable, especially in the world of bullies? A person can vote at 18 and join the army, so maybe that’s the reason. Do minors lack equal rights?
HB 225 is out of both the Education and Appropriations/Revenue Committees and would raise the school-dropout-age from 16 to 18, at least eventually. This writer spent five years teaching mostly high-school math in another life, learning firsthand how dealing with the no-learners steals huge amounts of time from teaching both the slow-learners and the fast-learners.
Teachers shouldn’t be forced to face this problem. The students are the ones who suffer, denied the teacher’s time and thus the ultimate opportunity to excel or at least obtain a passing knowledge of any subject. The big news lately is that only 34% of high school grads in Kentucky are equipped for either college or careers – intolerable, especially considering the inordinately huge segment of state/local budgets dedicated to education.
Except in rare cases, a 17-year-old entering tenth instead of twelfth grade is too academically impaired to do more than take up space except, perhaps, in one area in which there is interest. It would be better to direct no-learner students into endeavors in which they can be successful but outside the school setting, in which they are uncomfortable or determined to be disruptive. Simply blaming teachers for lacking motivational skills is not the answer. Forcing them to handle uninterested, often disruptive and incorrigible non-learners exacerbates their problems.
None of these social-engineering efforts are worth much and may even be harmful, as in encouraging the boozer to periodically check his heap in the parking lot to keep his breathalyzer below the DUI threshold, thus encouraging drinking rather than discouraging it.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Sound like a good idea? Of course…but only if the driver and not a less-drunk passenger (or a dog) activates the device! The DUI threshold for tolerance in Kentucky is .08. Question: At what setting would the breathalyzer on the device indicate as safe – .04, .02, or maybe .07? After all, a driver pulled over by an officer is not a DUI candidate if he checks in at .07. Logically and legally, then, the limit would be at .07, virtually the same as the feared DUI mark.
That’s not good enough, especially since people should never drive if they have imbibed any amount of alcohol. The difference between being legally drunk and not drunk (.01), besides being infinitely small, means nothing to a family whose loved one is killed by a driver checking in at .07, making him unsusceptible to a DUI murder/manslaughter charge that can be lodged against a driver checking in at .08.
The breathalyzer device would be susceptible to tampering that could render it totally useless. Would the offending driver be required to submit his car for testing once a month, once a week…or ever? Is this covered in the bill? Radar devices used by the police have to be tested and calibrated periodically, lest the results not stand up in Court, so one would assume the bill allows for this. If not, it’s useless.
A much better punishment for a DUI offense would be the impoundment of the car. The offender couldn’t tamper with this solution and, more importantly, he wouldn’t be on the road in it again if it were impounded…say, for six months and simply confiscated for a second offense. Such a law would have actual teeth. Only a few instances of its implementation would probably be needed to sharply curtail drunk-driving.
HB 35 has been passed, allowing anyone over 18 years of age to acquire a protective order against whomever he/she deems a threat. These orders are currently aimed at “domestic violence” victims, defined as married couples, shack-up couples and those who have a child together.
Those categories cover all the bases as a domestic matter but now any 18-year-old can apparently petition the court for protection, just naming the person to be protected against, with no domestic connection. Imagine the extra effort and expense required of law enforcement to monitor what could be an act of revenge by a high school senior girl against the guy who drops her for another “lovely.”
This is social engineering gone amok. Why set the age-limit at 18? Why not 14, an age when a possible victim is far more vulnerable, especially in the world of bullies? A person can vote at 18 and join the army, so maybe that’s the reason. Do minors lack equal rights?
HB 225 is out of both the Education and Appropriations/Revenue Committees and would raise the school-dropout-age from 16 to 18, at least eventually. This writer spent five years teaching mostly high-school math in another life, learning firsthand how dealing with the no-learners steals huge amounts of time from teaching both the slow-learners and the fast-learners.
Teachers shouldn’t be forced to face this problem. The students are the ones who suffer, denied the teacher’s time and thus the ultimate opportunity to excel or at least obtain a passing knowledge of any subject. The big news lately is that only 34% of high school grads in Kentucky are equipped for either college or careers – intolerable, especially considering the inordinately huge segment of state/local budgets dedicated to education.
Except in rare cases, a 17-year-old entering tenth instead of twelfth grade is too academically impaired to do more than take up space except, perhaps, in one area in which there is interest. It would be better to direct no-learner students into endeavors in which they can be successful but outside the school setting, in which they are uncomfortable or determined to be disruptive. Simply blaming teachers for lacking motivational skills is not the answer. Forcing them to handle uninterested, often disruptive and incorrigible non-learners exacerbates their problems.
None of these social-engineering efforts are worth much and may even be harmful, as in encouraging the boozer to periodically check his heap in the parking lot to keep his breathalyzer below the DUI threshold, thus encouraging drinking rather than discouraging it.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Military Rape
The latest news from the world of the military has to do with the problem of rape in the services. A lawsuit against the government and some officials has been instituted by 15 women and two men, current or former service-members who claim they were raped but that nothing significant was done about their complaints.
One of the complainants, Panayiota Bertzikis, is executive director of the Military Rape Crisis Center, which has a post-office address in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She claimed that while on a social hike (off duty) with a Coast Guard shipmate in 2006 her colleague raped her but when she reported it to her commanding officer the authorities did not take substantial steps to investigate the matter, instead, forcing her to live on the same floor with the accused rapist and that she had to tolerate being called “liar” and “whore” by others.
The rape might have occurred but it seems obvious enough that whatever happened was a “he said–she said” matter, and it’s a lead-pipe cinch there were no witnesses. Apparently she did not report the matter to the civil authorities (Burlington, Vt.), though rape is a crime in Vermont, not just in the Coast Guard if at all if off-duty and off-base. Her case is too insubstantial for validity, though it’s also a lead-pipe cinch that rapes do happen and that many if not most are not handled properly.
Most if not all the rapes – real, imagined, or simply accusatory – would not happen if the military had not been turned over to the social engineers years ago. For instance, the army tried gender-integrated boot camps in 1977 (Carter administration) but gave that up in 1982 (Reagan). The reason: The men, who would actually do the fighting in the future, were far too soft to be successful since the formerly stringent training-requirements had to be accommodated to what the women could stand. One can only wonder at the rape opportunities but the social engineers were too dumb to think of that…or didn’t care.
The Clinton administration (another democrat) brought the concept back in the 1990s, notwithstanding that the commanders were stuck again with the same problem, though the Marines had none of it. This is from the Heritage Foundation of 06 November 1997: “President Clinton's assistant secretary of the Navy, Barbara Pope, has averred that ‘We are in the process of weeding out the white male as the norm. We're about changing the culture.’” By his own admission, Clinton “loathed” the military, had no understanding of anything related to it and obviously didn’t care one way or another, rape notwithstanding.
Poor Pope was merely a nincompoop, just like the other social engineers. The system has been changed again so that combat troops in the army train in gender-segregated boot camps. Only two of the five army boot camps have coed elements, allowing for specialized training in such things as finance, personnel and maintenance.
Only the brain-power of an orangutan is required to see the problem of rape, as well as un-readiness, in the military. Mixing mostly older adolescents and early-20s in living/working arrangements essentially devoid of privacy is literally begging for trouble, whether concerning rape or anything else, not to mention with the actual preparedness needed to break things and kill people, the job of the soldier.
Though it’s politically incorrect to suggest it, there should be no mixture of the genders in the military. There should be no women on naval ships unless the entire crew is comprised of women…thus little chance for rape. The navy is preparing now to put women on submarines, a shocking development made more so by the fact that privacy on a sub is impossible. People practically live on top of each other, rape notwithstanding.
There should be no women in combat account the privacy problem but far more importantly because, as proven in the boot-camp experiments, they are and will not be battle-ready, except for the rare case occasionally. Soldiers will be more concerned with protecting their female colleagues than even themselves, not to mention concentrating on killing the enemy.
According to the Virginian Pilot of 16 October 2007, “Navy officials encourage women to plan pregnancies to coincide with shore duty. If women become pregnant during sea duty, they are transferred at 20 weeks' gestation, and weight and physical fitness requirements temporarily are eased. In addition, women receive 40 days of maternity leave after delivering an infant.” They’re also awarded a year of shore duty after giving birth, according to the article, making their total out-of-pocket time about 21 months.
According to Military Times of 17 October 2009, “Some shore commands in the Norfolk, Va., area report that up to 34 percent of their billets are filled by pregnant sailors, and commanders are complaining about a ‘lack of proper manning to conduct their mission,’ according to a Naval Inspector General Report.” This has nothing directly to do with rape but simply indicates the problem connected to feminizing the military…social engineering gone amok.
The services are damned by a Congress so hopelessly blockheaded that rape is almost the natural result of its sheer incompetence/insensitivity in allowing defense chiefs or presidents to make the military into a mixture of whorehouse and gigolo-world. God help us all.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
One of the complainants, Panayiota Bertzikis, is executive director of the Military Rape Crisis Center, which has a post-office address in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She claimed that while on a social hike (off duty) with a Coast Guard shipmate in 2006 her colleague raped her but when she reported it to her commanding officer the authorities did not take substantial steps to investigate the matter, instead, forcing her to live on the same floor with the accused rapist and that she had to tolerate being called “liar” and “whore” by others.
The rape might have occurred but it seems obvious enough that whatever happened was a “he said–she said” matter, and it’s a lead-pipe cinch there were no witnesses. Apparently she did not report the matter to the civil authorities (Burlington, Vt.), though rape is a crime in Vermont, not just in the Coast Guard if at all if off-duty and off-base. Her case is too insubstantial for validity, though it’s also a lead-pipe cinch that rapes do happen and that many if not most are not handled properly.
Most if not all the rapes – real, imagined, or simply accusatory – would not happen if the military had not been turned over to the social engineers years ago. For instance, the army tried gender-integrated boot camps in 1977 (Carter administration) but gave that up in 1982 (Reagan). The reason: The men, who would actually do the fighting in the future, were far too soft to be successful since the formerly stringent training-requirements had to be accommodated to what the women could stand. One can only wonder at the rape opportunities but the social engineers were too dumb to think of that…or didn’t care.
The Clinton administration (another democrat) brought the concept back in the 1990s, notwithstanding that the commanders were stuck again with the same problem, though the Marines had none of it. This is from the Heritage Foundation of 06 November 1997: “President Clinton's assistant secretary of the Navy, Barbara Pope, has averred that ‘We are in the process of weeding out the white male as the norm. We're about changing the culture.’” By his own admission, Clinton “loathed” the military, had no understanding of anything related to it and obviously didn’t care one way or another, rape notwithstanding.
Poor Pope was merely a nincompoop, just like the other social engineers. The system has been changed again so that combat troops in the army train in gender-segregated boot camps. Only two of the five army boot camps have coed elements, allowing for specialized training in such things as finance, personnel and maintenance.
Only the brain-power of an orangutan is required to see the problem of rape, as well as un-readiness, in the military. Mixing mostly older adolescents and early-20s in living/working arrangements essentially devoid of privacy is literally begging for trouble, whether concerning rape or anything else, not to mention with the actual preparedness needed to break things and kill people, the job of the soldier.
Though it’s politically incorrect to suggest it, there should be no mixture of the genders in the military. There should be no women on naval ships unless the entire crew is comprised of women…thus little chance for rape. The navy is preparing now to put women on submarines, a shocking development made more so by the fact that privacy on a sub is impossible. People practically live on top of each other, rape notwithstanding.
There should be no women in combat account the privacy problem but far more importantly because, as proven in the boot-camp experiments, they are and will not be battle-ready, except for the rare case occasionally. Soldiers will be more concerned with protecting their female colleagues than even themselves, not to mention concentrating on killing the enemy.
According to the Virginian Pilot of 16 October 2007, “Navy officials encourage women to plan pregnancies to coincide with shore duty. If women become pregnant during sea duty, they are transferred at 20 weeks' gestation, and weight and physical fitness requirements temporarily are eased. In addition, women receive 40 days of maternity leave after delivering an infant.” They’re also awarded a year of shore duty after giving birth, according to the article, making their total out-of-pocket time about 21 months.
According to Military Times of 17 October 2009, “Some shore commands in the Norfolk, Va., area report that up to 34 percent of their billets are filled by pregnant sailors, and commanders are complaining about a ‘lack of proper manning to conduct their mission,’ according to a Naval Inspector General Report.” This has nothing directly to do with rape but simply indicates the problem connected to feminizing the military…social engineering gone amok.
The services are damned by a Congress so hopelessly blockheaded that rape is almost the natural result of its sheer incompetence/insensitivity in allowing defense chiefs or presidents to make the military into a mixture of whorehouse and gigolo-world. God help us all.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Monday, February 14, 2011
The Prez/Athletic-Director/Trustees Cabal
Amid great fanfare accruing to his determination to turn the University of Kentucky into “top-20” status –Harvard on I-75 – Dr. Lee Todd became its president some ten years ago. The method: paying the “brightest brains in the land” to join the faculty/administration, even directly violating both the Kentucky Constitution and Kentucky statutes by conferring marriage-benefits to members of same-sex unions, whether homosexual or heterosexual, to bring it off.
UK has some strong colleges/departments and some not so strong, like most similar institutions. Buildings have been erected and the physical plant perhaps improved. Overall, UK has probably progressed over the ten years though no one can say to what extent but certainly to nowhere near the “top-20” mark.
A strange thing didn’t happen on the way to “top-20” status because it was already in place, namely, that UK perseveres as a “jock school.” The Athletic Department sits astride the university like an anteater on the prowl, ready to snap up any dollar within tongue-distance or claw anything threatening its existence.
Virtually since the beginning of his tenure, Todd has been obsessed with the commercial sports angle (Athletic Department), a smoke-&-mirrors part of the university, with the president as CEO and the athletic director as top-gofer serving at the pleasure of the boss within contractual bounds, including every conceivable loophole covering the derrieres of both operators.
Last year, Todd announced his leaving this June, stranding Athletics Director Mitch Barnhart until 2016 with a salary of only $475,000 annually plus gobs of “incentives” – two cars, club memberships, performance bonuses (mostly for just breathing consistently), payoffs when teams merely qualify for tournaments or go to bowl games, and appearing in the media, the latter worth $100,000 annually when Barnhart was hired in 2002, though it took six months for a Todd/Barnhart contract to be completed.
Counting everything except media stuff, Barnhart was good for a minimum of $605,000 in 2010…not near enough, so lame-duck Todd raised his salary recently to $600,000 (26% increase) and extended his contract through 2019. Add the sugar-sticks and Barnhart should be looking at maybe $800,000 this year (not counting media-participation).
One of Barnhart’s more notable achievements was the hiring and firing two years later of a basketball coach who sued successfully and collected $3 million from Barnhart’s bailiwick. He was “just not the right fit,” as Barnhart put it, strangely claiming the coach never signed a contract. After two years? A $125,000 raise for this incompetence?
Barnhart’s windfall just about equals the boondoggle the board of trustees (also called crony-crew) awarded Todd last September, a sort of going away present – $825,138 added to his base salary of $354,000 for the last two years, a total suck-up of $1,533,138, about a 100% raise. The faculty, with no significant raises for years, could “just eat cake.” In impolite circles, this is called highway-robbery, concerning the taxpayers.
Then-president of Vanderbilt, Gordon Gee tired of his giant anteater in 2003 and simply excised the Athletics Department and the athletics-director post, placing sports-activity in more appropriate areas of the university. He saw that athletes were essentially separated from anything other than sports, the antithesis of the term “student-athlete.”
According to Ulinks.com, Vanderbilt, also in the highly competitive Southeastern Conference, is the 43rd best university in the world. Gee meant for the school to maintain “top-20” status and for “student athlete” to mean something. Rather than folding athletically, as many thought it would, Vandy has prospered, not that it wins the conference or has the greatest records, but it has turned out some fine athletes since 2003 and owns a phenomenal athlete-graduation rate.
Todd had the perfect opportunity to point UK in the Vandy direction and had a great shot at it when he came since the “brightest in the land” would have given their eye-teeth to teach here. He didn’t do it. He and Barnhart have gotten well financially but the chance to drive toward “top-20” status has been squandered.
The campus-segregated basketball team has a dormitory of its own, with a glitzy new replacement on the way…gotta keep those guys FOCUSED, the latest buzz-word in sports-world. Academics are so distracting…but money talks.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
UK has some strong colleges/departments and some not so strong, like most similar institutions. Buildings have been erected and the physical plant perhaps improved. Overall, UK has probably progressed over the ten years though no one can say to what extent but certainly to nowhere near the “top-20” mark.
A strange thing didn’t happen on the way to “top-20” status because it was already in place, namely, that UK perseveres as a “jock school.” The Athletic Department sits astride the university like an anteater on the prowl, ready to snap up any dollar within tongue-distance or claw anything threatening its existence.
Virtually since the beginning of his tenure, Todd has been obsessed with the commercial sports angle (Athletic Department), a smoke-&-mirrors part of the university, with the president as CEO and the athletic director as top-gofer serving at the pleasure of the boss within contractual bounds, including every conceivable loophole covering the derrieres of both operators.
Last year, Todd announced his leaving this June, stranding Athletics Director Mitch Barnhart until 2016 with a salary of only $475,000 annually plus gobs of “incentives” – two cars, club memberships, performance bonuses (mostly for just breathing consistently), payoffs when teams merely qualify for tournaments or go to bowl games, and appearing in the media, the latter worth $100,000 annually when Barnhart was hired in 2002, though it took six months for a Todd/Barnhart contract to be completed.
Counting everything except media stuff, Barnhart was good for a minimum of $605,000 in 2010…not near enough, so lame-duck Todd raised his salary recently to $600,000 (26% increase) and extended his contract through 2019. Add the sugar-sticks and Barnhart should be looking at maybe $800,000 this year (not counting media-participation).
One of Barnhart’s more notable achievements was the hiring and firing two years later of a basketball coach who sued successfully and collected $3 million from Barnhart’s bailiwick. He was “just not the right fit,” as Barnhart put it, strangely claiming the coach never signed a contract. After two years? A $125,000 raise for this incompetence?
Barnhart’s windfall just about equals the boondoggle the board of trustees (also called crony-crew) awarded Todd last September, a sort of going away present – $825,138 added to his base salary of $354,000 for the last two years, a total suck-up of $1,533,138, about a 100% raise. The faculty, with no significant raises for years, could “just eat cake.” In impolite circles, this is called highway-robbery, concerning the taxpayers.
Then-president of Vanderbilt, Gordon Gee tired of his giant anteater in 2003 and simply excised the Athletics Department and the athletics-director post, placing sports-activity in more appropriate areas of the university. He saw that athletes were essentially separated from anything other than sports, the antithesis of the term “student-athlete.”
According to Ulinks.com, Vanderbilt, also in the highly competitive Southeastern Conference, is the 43rd best university in the world. Gee meant for the school to maintain “top-20” status and for “student athlete” to mean something. Rather than folding athletically, as many thought it would, Vandy has prospered, not that it wins the conference or has the greatest records, but it has turned out some fine athletes since 2003 and owns a phenomenal athlete-graduation rate.
Todd had the perfect opportunity to point UK in the Vandy direction and had a great shot at it when he came since the “brightest in the land” would have given their eye-teeth to teach here. He didn’t do it. He and Barnhart have gotten well financially but the chance to drive toward “top-20” status has been squandered.
The campus-segregated basketball team has a dormitory of its own, with a glitzy new replacement on the way…gotta keep those guys FOCUSED, the latest buzz-word in sports-world. Academics are so distracting…but money talks.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Friday, February 11, 2011
Revolution in D.C.
A late-night bulletin from Egyptian Television, complete with graphics:
For two weeks now, up to four- or five-hundred-thousand protesters have camped on the mall and in much smaller numbers in Lafayette Park, most of them peacefully surrounding the White House, but some have already sprayed graffiti on the various memorials and a few have broken some windows and burned cars along streets leading to the gathering places. Their leaders, nameless by design apparently but reported to be members of the fanatic Southern Baptist Convention party, have distributed signs bearing the messages OBAMA MUST GO and LEAVE NOW.
The momentum for the protest has been gathering steam for especially the last few weeks as proponents have tweeted, blogged, and used FaceBook to whip up enthusiasm and angst. Leaders have sought out members of the foreign press to enunciate their grievances, and reporters from entities such as al Jazeera have sought out any Egyptian-speakers or Arab-speakers in general in order to convey these complaints to the Middle East countries, whose leaders/populations have long hated the United States and longed for its demise.
The protesters have come prepared to stay – as some have said – until that well-known hot place freezes over or the president is forced to resign and leave the country, whichever comes first, though California would also be acceptable as a foreign destination. Their main complaint is that he not only has not kept his campaign promises but has also, obviously by design, attempted to take the nation into socialism and even regulate salt-amounts in potato chips. Their leaders have appealed to the military for its support in a rather transparent effort to effect a palace coup.
President Mubarak of Egypt, the most important of the Arab nations and despite its longstanding friendship with and support of the U.S., made it clear at the outset, both officially through himself and his prime minister, as well as through its largely government-controlled press that Obama should resign immediately and not bother with any constitutional requirements but simply let the people choose a new leader, hopefully with as little bloodshed as possible. However, the Egyptian position has changed on a daily basis, so no one knows exactly what it is, though Vice President Biden has reported that it’s just a three-letter word: GO.
What is commonly known as the mainstream media in the U.S. has virtually no presence in the protest-area, but some members of the Egyptian press have been roughed up by presumably the D.C. police and many have been detained for interrogation. The administration has attempted to blackout all TV newscasts of the event but has been unsuccessful. Protesters are still arriving in droves.
There are many groups of protesters with many different grievances. Some are incensed because Obama has not closed Guantanamo as he promised he would by January of 2010. Others are mad because instead of getting Americans out of Afghanistan by this summer the president has poured in more troops to fight the Taliban and al Qaeda until 2014.
Others are gravely disappointed that the president has lied inasmuch as he has added 30 million people and no doctors to healthcare protection while claiming to lower the deficit, an impossibility, not to mention the breakdown of the finest health effort in the world. Older people are incensed over the “death panels” incorporated in the legislation as well as because nearly 800 entities (translated big givers and cronies) have been exempted from the requirements of the law, not to mention that hip-replacement victims will have to wait up to two years for cheap plastic bones.
Still others are calling for his resignation because he has attempted to make good on a campaign promise everyone thought was a joke, namely that he would make electricity costs skyrocket, not least by disallowing the drilling for oil that would make the country oil-independent from nations that hate the U.S., and shutting down manufacturing via enormous cap-and-trade taxes, thus throwing millions out of work, with the actual unemployment rate at 22%, making it a third-world nation largely owned by the Chinese.
There’s great unrest among the protesters account Obama’s worldwide apologies for the very existence of this nation as well as his surrounding himself with financiers and czars, forming a sort of oligarchy, the public be damned. Some protesters, waving dirty socks, are calling for him to leave because he hasn’t withdrawn all troops from Iraq. However, the word has been all day that he’s about to step down and the people are jubilant and throwing parties in the WWII Memorial.
Barbed wire has been placed around the Capitol and the White House. Top military brass is at the Pentagon across the river, the rumor being that decisions are having to be made as to whether or not the military will side with the president, who has just said in a midnight speech he has no intention of leaving before 2012 and perhaps not then and that his position will not be dictated by foreign powers.
In the meantime, Mubarak has demanded that an orderly process of transfer of power and timeline be instituted tonight and has declared that the parties known as the SBC Convention, New Black Panthers and Weather Underground, inordinately beneficent groups, will not hijack the movement, never mind their history of extreme doctrine and/or violence.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
For two weeks now, up to four- or five-hundred-thousand protesters have camped on the mall and in much smaller numbers in Lafayette Park, most of them peacefully surrounding the White House, but some have already sprayed graffiti on the various memorials and a few have broken some windows and burned cars along streets leading to the gathering places. Their leaders, nameless by design apparently but reported to be members of the fanatic Southern Baptist Convention party, have distributed signs bearing the messages OBAMA MUST GO and LEAVE NOW.
The momentum for the protest has been gathering steam for especially the last few weeks as proponents have tweeted, blogged, and used FaceBook to whip up enthusiasm and angst. Leaders have sought out members of the foreign press to enunciate their grievances, and reporters from entities such as al Jazeera have sought out any Egyptian-speakers or Arab-speakers in general in order to convey these complaints to the Middle East countries, whose leaders/populations have long hated the United States and longed for its demise.
The protesters have come prepared to stay – as some have said – until that well-known hot place freezes over or the president is forced to resign and leave the country, whichever comes first, though California would also be acceptable as a foreign destination. Their main complaint is that he not only has not kept his campaign promises but has also, obviously by design, attempted to take the nation into socialism and even regulate salt-amounts in potato chips. Their leaders have appealed to the military for its support in a rather transparent effort to effect a palace coup.
President Mubarak of Egypt, the most important of the Arab nations and despite its longstanding friendship with and support of the U.S., made it clear at the outset, both officially through himself and his prime minister, as well as through its largely government-controlled press that Obama should resign immediately and not bother with any constitutional requirements but simply let the people choose a new leader, hopefully with as little bloodshed as possible. However, the Egyptian position has changed on a daily basis, so no one knows exactly what it is, though Vice President Biden has reported that it’s just a three-letter word: GO.
What is commonly known as the mainstream media in the U.S. has virtually no presence in the protest-area, but some members of the Egyptian press have been roughed up by presumably the D.C. police and many have been detained for interrogation. The administration has attempted to blackout all TV newscasts of the event but has been unsuccessful. Protesters are still arriving in droves.
There are many groups of protesters with many different grievances. Some are incensed because Obama has not closed Guantanamo as he promised he would by January of 2010. Others are mad because instead of getting Americans out of Afghanistan by this summer the president has poured in more troops to fight the Taliban and al Qaeda until 2014.
Others are gravely disappointed that the president has lied inasmuch as he has added 30 million people and no doctors to healthcare protection while claiming to lower the deficit, an impossibility, not to mention the breakdown of the finest health effort in the world. Older people are incensed over the “death panels” incorporated in the legislation as well as because nearly 800 entities (translated big givers and cronies) have been exempted from the requirements of the law, not to mention that hip-replacement victims will have to wait up to two years for cheap plastic bones.
Still others are calling for his resignation because he has attempted to make good on a campaign promise everyone thought was a joke, namely that he would make electricity costs skyrocket, not least by disallowing the drilling for oil that would make the country oil-independent from nations that hate the U.S., and shutting down manufacturing via enormous cap-and-trade taxes, thus throwing millions out of work, with the actual unemployment rate at 22%, making it a third-world nation largely owned by the Chinese.
There’s great unrest among the protesters account Obama’s worldwide apologies for the very existence of this nation as well as his surrounding himself with financiers and czars, forming a sort of oligarchy, the public be damned. Some protesters, waving dirty socks, are calling for him to leave because he hasn’t withdrawn all troops from Iraq. However, the word has been all day that he’s about to step down and the people are jubilant and throwing parties in the WWII Memorial.
Barbed wire has been placed around the Capitol and the White House. Top military brass is at the Pentagon across the river, the rumor being that decisions are having to be made as to whether or not the military will side with the president, who has just said in a midnight speech he has no intention of leaving before 2012 and perhaps not then and that his position will not be dictated by foreign powers.
In the meantime, Mubarak has demanded that an orderly process of transfer of power and timeline be instituted tonight and has declared that the parties known as the SBC Convention, New Black Panthers and Weather Underground, inordinately beneficent groups, will not hijack the movement, never mind their history of extreme doctrine and/or violence.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Monday, February 07, 2011
L’Affaire Egyptioan
The “Egyptian Affaire” has ended, leaving everyone with a sigh of relief and a lot of folks with egg on their respective faces. Two-thirds of the mainstream media considered this event so important that it dispatched its Olympian “anchors,” Brian Williams (NBC) and Katie Couric (CBS), to the action in Cairo, never mind that the networks already had the ground crawling with their representatives/spin-meisters. Couric became too tweeter-happy and so mistakenly tweeted that Mubarak had resigned, forcing an apology. Mubarak hasn’t resigned to date and most likely will not any time soon, if at all before the September elections.
Egyptian Vice President Suleiman made it a point to mention his belief that the newsy folks had conspired with elements on the ground to cause the upheaval. This is easy to believe since the Americans treated it much like they did affairs vis-à-vis Katrina, blaming the U.S. government then for allowing that disaster to become a calamity, notwithstanding that later investigation proved the stark ineptitude of New Orleans Mayor Nagin and Louisiana Governor Blanco to be the actual and damning reason for much if not all the suffering.
There was no doubt that NBC, CBS, ABC and their affiliates sided with the protestors and against the government, notwithstanding the grief the whole thing caused. Fox’s Shepard Smith had his usual hysterics, too (as he did in the Katrina thing), not least because a couple of Fox news-people were manhandled, not surprising since Suleiman, whether right or wrong, must have concluded that the reporter/commentators (no such animal as reporters anymore) were attempting to turn the whole world against the Egyptian government, never realizing the enormity of the stakes involved. After a tumultuous week, the Friday demonstrations in Cairo were peaceful. The reason: The news people from all over the world, especially from the U.S., were invited out, often in very harsh ways.
Venezuela’s Chavez announced that if the Suez were to be closed oil would rise to $200 per barrel. With the army on his side, Mubarak, who has kept the Suez open, stays until the army is not on his side. He’s no beauty but at least Egypt is only 90% Sunni Muslim instead of 99%, as in Algeria, about the same as most other countries in that area. Mubarak and Yemen’s President Saleh (also a 30-year + guy) are the only U.S. allies in fighting the terrorists, so there’s a natural trade-off vis-à-vis the respective populaces. Anyhow, the U.S. Congress is routinely dominated (and corrupted) by operatives with well over 30 years of service, so what else is new?
It’s impolitic and politically incorrect to do so, but the Muslim countries can be compared to the countries of Latin America, which were colonized largely by nations in which Roman Catholicism was perhaps the main player. The Catholic missionaries discouraged individual study of the scriptures, preferring indoctrination to understanding. This was another way of discouraging meaningful education concerning everything else. South America, if anything, is blessed with more natural resources than North America, with Brazil alone almost as large as the lower 48. Look at the difference between North and South America not only economically but governmentally, with South American governments largely fashioned at the point of the gun. North America was colonized by people accustomed to thinking for themselves, spiritually and otherwise. Education was a main difference.
The Muslim countries have little industry other than tourism. The power rests almost entirely with the ayatollahs, imams, etc., who operate under the Koran and therefore bloodthirstily. Compare that to the Inquisition-operated Dark Ages and the Catholicism of the colonial era that played upon ignorance, to see some answers. Ignorance is actually glorified in Islam, as evidenced, for instance, in the “honor killings” of girls, with no similar treatment for men, not that either would be right. The literacy rate in Afghanistan is 28%; Yemen, 58.9%; Egypt, 72%. An Afghan army officer complained the other day that only one of ten Afghan men could read or drive a vehicle.
Granted that much of the topography of the Middle East is hostile to development, people with freedom from religious fanaticism and consequent ignorance can be expected to take care of themselves. Corruption by both the religionists and the government is a factor, such as in Egypt, but there’s enough corruption in Washington and state capitals to make that fact almost moot. We survive that corruption because we have the tools, especially mentally, although the bent toward federal authoritarianism in this country is scary. For instance, the “salt” laws are in the works, government telling people what they may eat. Or, there are 777 exemptions now from the Healthcare law just passed for entities such as labor unions and favored businesses, with no accountability to anyone. Presumably, Sunstein, the main regulator, makes these decisions, entirely political in nature…but, who knows?
The supreme irony lies in the fact that Obama is attempting to gather all power to the “Beltway,” especially to the White House, with its many czars accountable to no one but the president, while at the same time inveighing against Mubarak and caterwauling about the Egyptian masses unfairly treated by their central government.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Egyptian Vice President Suleiman made it a point to mention his belief that the newsy folks had conspired with elements on the ground to cause the upheaval. This is easy to believe since the Americans treated it much like they did affairs vis-à-vis Katrina, blaming the U.S. government then for allowing that disaster to become a calamity, notwithstanding that later investigation proved the stark ineptitude of New Orleans Mayor Nagin and Louisiana Governor Blanco to be the actual and damning reason for much if not all the suffering.
There was no doubt that NBC, CBS, ABC and their affiliates sided with the protestors and against the government, notwithstanding the grief the whole thing caused. Fox’s Shepard Smith had his usual hysterics, too (as he did in the Katrina thing), not least because a couple of Fox news-people were manhandled, not surprising since Suleiman, whether right or wrong, must have concluded that the reporter/commentators (no such animal as reporters anymore) were attempting to turn the whole world against the Egyptian government, never realizing the enormity of the stakes involved. After a tumultuous week, the Friday demonstrations in Cairo were peaceful. The reason: The news people from all over the world, especially from the U.S., were invited out, often in very harsh ways.
Venezuela’s Chavez announced that if the Suez were to be closed oil would rise to $200 per barrel. With the army on his side, Mubarak, who has kept the Suez open, stays until the army is not on his side. He’s no beauty but at least Egypt is only 90% Sunni Muslim instead of 99%, as in Algeria, about the same as most other countries in that area. Mubarak and Yemen’s President Saleh (also a 30-year + guy) are the only U.S. allies in fighting the terrorists, so there’s a natural trade-off vis-à-vis the respective populaces. Anyhow, the U.S. Congress is routinely dominated (and corrupted) by operatives with well over 30 years of service, so what else is new?
It’s impolitic and politically incorrect to do so, but the Muslim countries can be compared to the countries of Latin America, which were colonized largely by nations in which Roman Catholicism was perhaps the main player. The Catholic missionaries discouraged individual study of the scriptures, preferring indoctrination to understanding. This was another way of discouraging meaningful education concerning everything else. South America, if anything, is blessed with more natural resources than North America, with Brazil alone almost as large as the lower 48. Look at the difference between North and South America not only economically but governmentally, with South American governments largely fashioned at the point of the gun. North America was colonized by people accustomed to thinking for themselves, spiritually and otherwise. Education was a main difference.
The Muslim countries have little industry other than tourism. The power rests almost entirely with the ayatollahs, imams, etc., who operate under the Koran and therefore bloodthirstily. Compare that to the Inquisition-operated Dark Ages and the Catholicism of the colonial era that played upon ignorance, to see some answers. Ignorance is actually glorified in Islam, as evidenced, for instance, in the “honor killings” of girls, with no similar treatment for men, not that either would be right. The literacy rate in Afghanistan is 28%; Yemen, 58.9%; Egypt, 72%. An Afghan army officer complained the other day that only one of ten Afghan men could read or drive a vehicle.
Granted that much of the topography of the Middle East is hostile to development, people with freedom from religious fanaticism and consequent ignorance can be expected to take care of themselves. Corruption by both the religionists and the government is a factor, such as in Egypt, but there’s enough corruption in Washington and state capitals to make that fact almost moot. We survive that corruption because we have the tools, especially mentally, although the bent toward federal authoritarianism in this country is scary. For instance, the “salt” laws are in the works, government telling people what they may eat. Or, there are 777 exemptions now from the Healthcare law just passed for entities such as labor unions and favored businesses, with no accountability to anyone. Presumably, Sunstein, the main regulator, makes these decisions, entirely political in nature…but, who knows?
The supreme irony lies in the fact that Obama is attempting to gather all power to the “Beltway,” especially to the White House, with its many czars accountable to no one but the president, while at the same time inveighing against Mubarak and caterwauling about the Egyptian masses unfairly treated by their central government.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Saturday, February 05, 2011
Obama's Foot/Mouth Problem
It would be hard to find a more profound exercise in complete ineptitude than in the conduct of President Obama and State Secretary Clinton during the “Egyptian Affair.” Clinton had just acclaimed Egypt as stable and Veep Biden had just asserted that Mubarak was not considered a dictator. Then, when the protests started (perhaps somewhat because of those statements), complete with looting and the destruction of property, Obama came out swinging and made it plain that Mubarak had to get out immediately. He didn’t do this in private; rather, he did it purposefully facing the TV cameras for the whole world to see his public debasement of Mubarak, a royal back-stabbing to a friend and friendly nation.
That didn’t happen, of course, even though Obama sent an envoy to tell Mubarak the same thing in private. Ironically, as reported by the BBC on 05 February, the special envoy, Frank Wisner, a former ambassador in Egypt, has publicly declared that Mubarak should stay in place. This leaves Obama twisting in the wind unless he had some ulterior motive in the whole mess. Actually, he just doesn’t understand what a transition entails. It’s not like the one between a U.S. presidential election and inauguration.
In an interview with ABC’s Christiane Amanpour on 03 February, Egyptian Vice President Suleiman said this: "No, Egypt will not be anything like Tunisia. This is different. You know that our president is a fighter. He lived on this soil and he will die on this soil." Suleiman has also blamed the foreign press, presumably acting in concert with dissidents, for the disorder and is obviously not amused by Obama’s tactics or that of the U.S. press. Like Mubarak, he is personified by the military and the two men have long been together in the trenches, especially fighting off the murderous Muslim Brotherhood’s influence in Egypt.
Obama virtually boasted of his two conversations with Mubarak, one right after Mubarak had explained publicly that he was stepping down in September but would remain as president until then to keep order. Obviously and strangely on the side of the protesters, Obama never got it. Finally, in a press conference with Canadian Prime Minister Harper, he said emphatically that Egyptians, not Americans or anyone else, must decide their fate – all this after he had publicly inserted not the Egyptians but himself into the equation, along with Clinton, who was merely pathetic. He then talked of Mubarak protecting his legacy and made it plain that he meant for Mubarak to get out of the way. Amazing!
Strangely a couple years ago when Ahmadinejad and the ayatollah cold-bloodedly murdered protesters, who needed help from any direction in an entirely similar incident in Iran, Obama had little or nothing to say, even though Iran is a sworn enemy of this country. Egypt, by contrast, has been the only Arabic/Muslim friend to this country for decades but Obama tried his best not to referee the upheaval, electing instead to call the game, so naïve or obviously disingenuous or both that he lost all credibility everywhere.
More recently, Clinton put out the word about an assassination-attempt on Suleiman, with a couple of guards killed, but apparently had made little or no effort to see if it actually happened, thus adding to the turmoil. It appears now that it didn’t happen, but who knows? Why didn’t she check?
In January, 36,000 jobs were added in this country while 90,000 people entered the work force. Result: The administration lowered the unemployment rate to 9% – cooking the books, obviously – and expected the public to believe that. It merely dropped the folks who had given up looking for work, pushing the actual unemployment rate beyond 20% certainly and most likely much higher. Imagine those hundreds of thousands of people out of work jamming the mall outside the White House in protest. After all, Obama has been leading the country steadily into bankruptcy, meaning that they don’t have a prayer. They would have a cause, certainly, the same as the folks in Egypt, who are suffering from low wages and high food prices, as well as unemployment, a global problem.
As the protesters demonstrated and got out of hand with looting and violence, Obama, knowing the D.C. police couldn’t or wouldn’t handle the problem, thus protecting him, his family and the government, would naturally call out the army, though that would be unconstitutional. This is precisely what happened in Egypt but would Obama not think that what’s good for Egypt would be good when his own backside needs protecting, not to mention the nation itself and law and order.
That may be extreme, but it serves to remark the inability of the administration to do other than go lurching off in all directions without any understanding of the need for just shutting-up for a while and letting the Egyptians get a handle on the problem. Obama appears as a poodle snapping at the legs of a huge but tolerant Pit Bull, a whippersnapper attempting to order around an 83-year-old 30-year president, who has to handle in a day more serious problems than Obama faces in a week…and most likely without a teleprompter.
The latest: Obama is now castigating the intelligence agencies for not informing him in advance of everything that was about to happen so he just maybe wouldn’t shoot-off his mouth before he thinks, as if anyone can figure what will happen from one day to the next in Arab country. But it shifts the blame, and isn’t that the name of the game in Washington these days?
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
That didn’t happen, of course, even though Obama sent an envoy to tell Mubarak the same thing in private. Ironically, as reported by the BBC on 05 February, the special envoy, Frank Wisner, a former ambassador in Egypt, has publicly declared that Mubarak should stay in place. This leaves Obama twisting in the wind unless he had some ulterior motive in the whole mess. Actually, he just doesn’t understand what a transition entails. It’s not like the one between a U.S. presidential election and inauguration.
In an interview with ABC’s Christiane Amanpour on 03 February, Egyptian Vice President Suleiman said this: "No, Egypt will not be anything like Tunisia. This is different. You know that our president is a fighter. He lived on this soil and he will die on this soil." Suleiman has also blamed the foreign press, presumably acting in concert with dissidents, for the disorder and is obviously not amused by Obama’s tactics or that of the U.S. press. Like Mubarak, he is personified by the military and the two men have long been together in the trenches, especially fighting off the murderous Muslim Brotherhood’s influence in Egypt.
Obama virtually boasted of his two conversations with Mubarak, one right after Mubarak had explained publicly that he was stepping down in September but would remain as president until then to keep order. Obviously and strangely on the side of the protesters, Obama never got it. Finally, in a press conference with Canadian Prime Minister Harper, he said emphatically that Egyptians, not Americans or anyone else, must decide their fate – all this after he had publicly inserted not the Egyptians but himself into the equation, along with Clinton, who was merely pathetic. He then talked of Mubarak protecting his legacy and made it plain that he meant for Mubarak to get out of the way. Amazing!
Strangely a couple years ago when Ahmadinejad and the ayatollah cold-bloodedly murdered protesters, who needed help from any direction in an entirely similar incident in Iran, Obama had little or nothing to say, even though Iran is a sworn enemy of this country. Egypt, by contrast, has been the only Arabic/Muslim friend to this country for decades but Obama tried his best not to referee the upheaval, electing instead to call the game, so naïve or obviously disingenuous or both that he lost all credibility everywhere.
More recently, Clinton put out the word about an assassination-attempt on Suleiman, with a couple of guards killed, but apparently had made little or no effort to see if it actually happened, thus adding to the turmoil. It appears now that it didn’t happen, but who knows? Why didn’t she check?
In January, 36,000 jobs were added in this country while 90,000 people entered the work force. Result: The administration lowered the unemployment rate to 9% – cooking the books, obviously – and expected the public to believe that. It merely dropped the folks who had given up looking for work, pushing the actual unemployment rate beyond 20% certainly and most likely much higher. Imagine those hundreds of thousands of people out of work jamming the mall outside the White House in protest. After all, Obama has been leading the country steadily into bankruptcy, meaning that they don’t have a prayer. They would have a cause, certainly, the same as the folks in Egypt, who are suffering from low wages and high food prices, as well as unemployment, a global problem.
As the protesters demonstrated and got out of hand with looting and violence, Obama, knowing the D.C. police couldn’t or wouldn’t handle the problem, thus protecting him, his family and the government, would naturally call out the army, though that would be unconstitutional. This is precisely what happened in Egypt but would Obama not think that what’s good for Egypt would be good when his own backside needs protecting, not to mention the nation itself and law and order.
That may be extreme, but it serves to remark the inability of the administration to do other than go lurching off in all directions without any understanding of the need for just shutting-up for a while and letting the Egyptians get a handle on the problem. Obama appears as a poodle snapping at the legs of a huge but tolerant Pit Bull, a whippersnapper attempting to order around an 83-year-old 30-year president, who has to handle in a day more serious problems than Obama faces in a week…and most likely without a teleprompter.
The latest: Obama is now castigating the intelligence agencies for not informing him in advance of everything that was about to happen so he just maybe wouldn’t shoot-off his mouth before he thinks, as if anyone can figure what will happen from one day to the next in Arab country. But it shifts the blame, and isn’t that the name of the game in Washington these days?
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Wednesday, February 02, 2011
Rahm, Ayers & the Rev.
It's mid-afternoon in a room over the Anything Goes Bar on a busy street in South Chicago. In attendance are university professors William Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn, former White House chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel, and the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, hereinafter referenced as A, D, E, and W, respectively, if not respectfully.
~E: We all know why we’re here so…
~W: Actually I’m not sure, Rahm, unless you’ve got somethin’ else I can use to damn America. Our friend Barry listened to me damn America for 20 years…so…I suspect he’s all for gettin’ it done. Reckon he might suggest Kandahar as the current Hiroshima…or maybe poppin’ HIV on all the Shiites, like Reagan and Bush’s old man did to black folk?
~E: Of course not, Rev! He just sent about 30,000 of our guys over there last year to break things and kill people. You outta your *&^%$*^ gourd? Of course, he’s put out a reward for the guy who fires his %#$@*^^ gun the least times and kills the fewest people.
~D: Maybe he has an assassination in mind (giggles) or somebody to waste…somebody like that mean Mitch McConnell…maybe a poison-tipped umbrella to the thigh…oh…hahahahaha…
~A: Shut up, Berhardine! Cut her some slack, guys. She dreamed of her new hero, Jared Loughner, again last night and threw darts at the dog this morning…you know…that PTSD thing…had to call off her classes at the university today…couldn’t take a chance on her threatening the dean again.
~E: Actually, I’m checking to see if that organization is still in place for all ^%^**(%# political emergencies…
~W: Oh, you mean the Universalism to Negate Demeaning of Erudite Realists, Theologians and Honest Educators Basic to the United States. It’s called by its acronym thingy on the South Side…you know…Under the Bus! I’m the head honcho right now and Jesse and Daschle are helpin’ me with fund-raisin’ for the convention in Cancun this month.
~A: Cancun! You outta your mind, Jeremiah? That’s not even in the *&^%$# U-S-of-A!
~W: Yeah…but you won’t see no snow there in February…hoo hah…
~D: Maybe you’ll run into some of the drug-runners and get some action…better take a few grenades and some AK-47s…blood flying everywhere, better than blowing up a measly Brinks truck.
~E: Stuff it, Bernadine. I’ve called this little meeting for two #@%$^%* reasons. Maybe I should say two elections.
~A: Let me guess, Rahm…Chicago mayor and U.S. president 2012.
~D: Whoopee! Bring back the Untouchables and rearm ACORN and Van Jones’ outfit, STORM. Revolutionize everything in sight. Death to the infidels!
~A: Shut up Bernardine! This is not 1968…those glorious days are gone forever (starts singing Blowin’ In the Wind, We Shall Overcome).
~E: A-r-g-g-h-h-a-a-R-R-G-G-H-H!!! Shut the *&^%**^% up, Bill. You’re way off key anyway. And, Bernardine, this is not prayer time for the Muslims, even if Bill does sound like one of those muezzins screaming out of one of those towers. (turns to Ayers) You’re right, Bill. Got a twofer in the works.
~W: Why do I smell somethin’ like the West Wing movin’ on over to Chicago now? You gonna run for mayor and run the Chicago White House Campaign, too, Rahm? Barry’s settin’ up campaign headquarters where everybody votes twice and the dead maybe three times…hoo hah…I love it. By the way, Rahm, did you actually send ol’ Howard Dean a dead fish in the mail back when he got the DNC job, threw you under the bus, and won big in 2008?
~E: Never mind, Jeremiah. I’m not the ^%&*%# typical white person. I’m more like you…hahahaha…I don’t have scruples…
~W: He don’t have conscience and dem dat has ’em is soon forgotten (duet with Rahm – Ol’ Man River tune).
~A: Sheesh…is this the South Side loony bin?
~D: (looking in handbag): I’m bound to have something to put them out of their misery (pulls out letter-opener and lunges toward Wright).
~A: That does it, Bernardine! You’d better leave and don’t run over anyone on some sidewalk on the way home. (D leaves)
~E: Sorry about that, Bill…got carried away. It’s a form of that ^*%$# PTSD…still sweating out that #^%&*@# judge that said I haven’t lived here since 2009 and can’t be elected to rule Chicago with an iron fist. The trauma’s about got me. Anyway, now that I know the Under The Bus is still in business, we can make plans for my mayor-run and Barry’s gig in 2012.
~W: Word to the wise there, Rahm, namely, don’t put no horse’s head in the judge’s bed…not even a dead fish in the mail. You may not be Italian but you got the “godfather mentality,” though I don’t actually believe you bit off your little finger.
~A: So what’s the strategy, Rahm? You got the machine in your corner here, bought and paid for when Barry appointed the mayor’s brother to your old job. You got the union guys, with old Andy Stern the emeritus and probably still head of the SEIU having unlimited access to the White House, as you know. The little old ladies with blue hair think you’re a hunk and money’s no problem, with George Soros worth a few million in the extreme case that some votes have to be bought.
~E: Well, I’m still on the ballot but the thing is still in the #%$&^*^ courts so…
~A: Little arm-twisting, huh, Rahm? Maybe even worse, huh, like a threat to the judge’s family…a sort of contract. The Weather Underground has a special manual on that stuff. Just say the word and…
~W: Whoa! I didn’t sign up for no part o’ that, Bill. You and Bernardine mighta got away with that stuff back in the 60s but that ain’t now. The feds are probably watchin’ us right now, meanin’ ME, and I got a bunch o’ sermons lined up, with all those LOVE offerings. That may be Chicago politics but look what ol’ Fitzgerald did to Blago. Hunh-uh…none o’ that stuff. I’m outta here…and I never was here…and I won’t be here again. (leaves)
~A: That old man just has no guts, does he, Rahm? Rahm? Rahm? Rahm?
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
~E: We all know why we’re here so…
~W: Actually I’m not sure, Rahm, unless you’ve got somethin’ else I can use to damn America. Our friend Barry listened to me damn America for 20 years…so…I suspect he’s all for gettin’ it done. Reckon he might suggest Kandahar as the current Hiroshima…or maybe poppin’ HIV on all the Shiites, like Reagan and Bush’s old man did to black folk?
~E: Of course not, Rev! He just sent about 30,000 of our guys over there last year to break things and kill people. You outta your *&^%$*^ gourd? Of course, he’s put out a reward for the guy who fires his %#$@*^^ gun the least times and kills the fewest people.
~D: Maybe he has an assassination in mind (giggles) or somebody to waste…somebody like that mean Mitch McConnell…maybe a poison-tipped umbrella to the thigh…oh…hahahahaha…
~A: Shut up, Berhardine! Cut her some slack, guys. She dreamed of her new hero, Jared Loughner, again last night and threw darts at the dog this morning…you know…that PTSD thing…had to call off her classes at the university today…couldn’t take a chance on her threatening the dean again.
~E: Actually, I’m checking to see if that organization is still in place for all ^%^**(%# political emergencies…
~W: Oh, you mean the Universalism to Negate Demeaning of Erudite Realists, Theologians and Honest Educators Basic to the United States. It’s called by its acronym thingy on the South Side…you know…Under the Bus! I’m the head honcho right now and Jesse and Daschle are helpin’ me with fund-raisin’ for the convention in Cancun this month.
~A: Cancun! You outta your mind, Jeremiah? That’s not even in the *&^%$# U-S-of-A!
~W: Yeah…but you won’t see no snow there in February…hoo hah…
~D: Maybe you’ll run into some of the drug-runners and get some action…better take a few grenades and some AK-47s…blood flying everywhere, better than blowing up a measly Brinks truck.
~E: Stuff it, Bernadine. I’ve called this little meeting for two #@%$^%* reasons. Maybe I should say two elections.
~A: Let me guess, Rahm…Chicago mayor and U.S. president 2012.
~D: Whoopee! Bring back the Untouchables and rearm ACORN and Van Jones’ outfit, STORM. Revolutionize everything in sight. Death to the infidels!
~A: Shut up Bernardine! This is not 1968…those glorious days are gone forever (starts singing Blowin’ In the Wind, We Shall Overcome).
~E: A-r-g-g-h-h-a-a-R-R-G-G-H-H!!! Shut the *&^%**^% up, Bill. You’re way off key anyway. And, Bernardine, this is not prayer time for the Muslims, even if Bill does sound like one of those muezzins screaming out of one of those towers. (turns to Ayers) You’re right, Bill. Got a twofer in the works.
~W: Why do I smell somethin’ like the West Wing movin’ on over to Chicago now? You gonna run for mayor and run the Chicago White House Campaign, too, Rahm? Barry’s settin’ up campaign headquarters where everybody votes twice and the dead maybe three times…hoo hah…I love it. By the way, Rahm, did you actually send ol’ Howard Dean a dead fish in the mail back when he got the DNC job, threw you under the bus, and won big in 2008?
~E: Never mind, Jeremiah. I’m not the ^%&*%# typical white person. I’m more like you…hahahaha…I don’t have scruples…
~W: He don’t have conscience and dem dat has ’em is soon forgotten (duet with Rahm – Ol’ Man River tune).
~A: Sheesh…is this the South Side loony bin?
~D: (looking in handbag): I’m bound to have something to put them out of their misery (pulls out letter-opener and lunges toward Wright).
~A: That does it, Bernardine! You’d better leave and don’t run over anyone on some sidewalk on the way home. (D leaves)
~E: Sorry about that, Bill…got carried away. It’s a form of that ^*%$# PTSD…still sweating out that #^%&*@# judge that said I haven’t lived here since 2009 and can’t be elected to rule Chicago with an iron fist. The trauma’s about got me. Anyway, now that I know the Under The Bus is still in business, we can make plans for my mayor-run and Barry’s gig in 2012.
~W: Word to the wise there, Rahm, namely, don’t put no horse’s head in the judge’s bed…not even a dead fish in the mail. You may not be Italian but you got the “godfather mentality,” though I don’t actually believe you bit off your little finger.
~A: So what’s the strategy, Rahm? You got the machine in your corner here, bought and paid for when Barry appointed the mayor’s brother to your old job. You got the union guys, with old Andy Stern the emeritus and probably still head of the SEIU having unlimited access to the White House, as you know. The little old ladies with blue hair think you’re a hunk and money’s no problem, with George Soros worth a few million in the extreme case that some votes have to be bought.
~E: Well, I’m still on the ballot but the thing is still in the #%$&^*^ courts so…
~A: Little arm-twisting, huh, Rahm? Maybe even worse, huh, like a threat to the judge’s family…a sort of contract. The Weather Underground has a special manual on that stuff. Just say the word and…
~W: Whoa! I didn’t sign up for no part o’ that, Bill. You and Bernardine mighta got away with that stuff back in the 60s but that ain’t now. The feds are probably watchin’ us right now, meanin’ ME, and I got a bunch o’ sermons lined up, with all those LOVE offerings. That may be Chicago politics but look what ol’ Fitzgerald did to Blago. Hunh-uh…none o’ that stuff. I’m outta here…and I never was here…and I won’t be here again. (leaves)
~A: That old man just has no guts, does he, Rahm? Rahm? Rahm? Rahm?
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
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