It’s a well-known fact that Senator John McCain will find it if there’s a TV camera within 25 miles or an interviewer most anywhere. He is also given to floor speeches in the Senate, some of them saber-rattling warmongerings such as those he devoted to Obama’s Libyan massacre by the U.S. and NATO last year.
Here is part of his latest hawk-speech, delivered the other day on the floor of the Senate: “Providing military assistance to the Free Syrian Army and other opposition groups is necessary, but at this late hour, that alone will not be sufficient to stop the slaughter and save innocent lives. The only realistic way to do so is with foreign airpower. Therefore, at the request of [opposition forces], the United States should lead an international effort to protect key population centers in Syria, especially in the north, through airstrikes on Assad’s forces.” (Politico)
Sound familiar? This was his position on Libya, a nation that posed no threat to this country last year or in any other year and, in fact, turned over most of its weaponry to the U.S. nearly ten years ago. He was joined in that position by Senators Graham and Lieberman, who have expressed their support of his present position, which is simply to bomb the bejesus out of a government of which they disapprove.
There’s no such thing as an actual “Free Syrian Army,” just like there was no such thing as a “Free Libyan Army.” One remembers McCain’s trip to that beleagured nation, during or after which he indicated that he had found the good guys and it was okay to support them. Has anyone ever heard of them since? According to Jim Michaels of USA Today, “Libyan militias that are sitting on stockpiles of portable anti-aircraft missiles will probably not relinquish them until they reach a broad political agreement with the country's fledgling central government, a top state department official said.”
So…Libya has its militias and the country is 97% Muslim, an attribute of which is that killing fellow Muslims is okay if necessary. Militia is just another term for “tribe,” most likely, and one can only wonder how many more Libyans will die as the militias/tribes stake-out their territories.
Syria is 74% Sunni Muslim, 10% Christian and 16% other Muslim, including Assad’s branch, the Alawites. In other words, his is a pronounced minority government, just as was Saddam’s Iraq. Therein lies much of the reason for the turmoil. Assad controls the army, which so far has been loyal enough to obey his orders to put down the insurrection, during which the consensus is that some 7,500 people have perished. Assad seems to have total control, notwithstanding the rebellion.
The “Terrible Three” senators insist that the U.S. should start killing Syrians (guided missiles and bombs targeting military installations, if found, are sometimes grossly misguided) because Assad has no right to remain the president. President Obama, who probably knows no more about the Middle East than most folks, has said that Assad must go. What would he do if the dixiecrats, for instance, should start taking over the southern states and even (gasp) protest in Washington? What did Lincoln do under those same circumstances?
Qaddafi insisted that “outside forces” were fueling the rebellion in Libya. According to Euronews, Assad has blamed such forces for the ten-month bloodletting in his country, those forces, according to him, backed by western powers. Well…of course they’re backed by western powers if one concludes that McCain and his cronies are deemed powerful enough to gain leverage vis-à-vis throwing out Assad, who certainly watched Obama’s bloodbath in Libya last year.
In a Congressional hearing on 07 March, Defense Secretary Panetta made it clear to McCain that he isn’t about to put American GIs in harm’s way in yet another Middle East mess not of this country’s making, though Obama’s foolish statements and those of State Secretary Clinton make one wonder. They should treat their respective mouths with a modicum of respect by simply not putting their feet in them constantly.
After what he suffered as a POW in the Vietnam conflict and in light of what he sees happening now in both Iraq and Afghanistan, how could McCain possibly believe anything good can come from even more military meddling…anywhere right now? He watched as the U.S. and NATO literally bombed Libya to pieces for seven months and now should understand that Libya is no better off now than it was under Qaddafi.
Iraq is devolving into civil war, as is Afghanistan, something that knowledgeable people knew would be the case after the rest of the world got out of the way. In Egypt, the Arab Spring this year has Egyptians fighting each other instead of tearing up things in and around Tahrir Square, with the army still in control. The bloodletting in Muslim countries is just part of the politics. In this country, people vote. In Muslim countries, people choose up sides and shoot at each other.
McCain, Graham, Lieberman (has he forgotten the murderous holocaust?), Obama and Clinton should shut up. The U.S. military has been under far too much stress for ten years. The time has come to chill but of greater import is the fact that Syria is not a threat to this country and therefore should not be bombed to pieces, as was Libya.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Wednesday, March 07, 2012
Sunday, March 04, 2012
Apologist-in-Chief Obama & the Lady
Just when one might have suspected that the nadir in political discourse had been reached in the president’s three-page apology to Afghan head honcho Karzai over the burning of some paper alleged to be sacred, as if paper can be ordained these days, Obama has managed to so further trivialize his office that he phoned a woman the other day and apologized not for some dumb thing he had done – like the Karzai apology – but for something talking-head Rush Limbaugh had said. Election years are expected to be silly seasons at best but the prexy gave the term “silly” a brand new elevation.
Even funnier was the question posed to Newt Gingrich by NBC’s resident Obama propagandist David Gregory on Meet the Press 04 March, to wit, how badly had Limbaugh’s remark hurt the republican chances for winning the presidency, whereupon he received a lecture by Gingrich that almost literally cut him off at the knees. People like slack-jawed Gregory never learn.
The question of the latest apology points to the fact that a heretofore-creeping crudity in the nation has advanced to warp speed. The fact that Obama insists on being apologist-in-chief (though not a constitutional responsibility) had to do with the subject of sex, never mind that he would claim it was all about women’s reproductive rights or health care or whatever. It was occasioned by what had to be one of the silliest appearances before a congressional committee (though not an “official” one in which, presumably, a witness is not sworn) that can be imagined.
The witness, a Georgetown Law student, lamented the fact that birth-control vehicles cost a woman $1,000 a year, making it an unseemly expense. Limbaugh approached what she said from the standpoint of sex only…and that is certainly the way most people would take it. The sex-act is necessary for a birth to be inculcated, the obvious way to avoid that catastrophe simply being not to have “unprotected” sex, ergo, have a supply of either pills or condoms at all times.
In passing, it might be noted that the president, while insisting in 2008 that marriage can be defined only as between a man and woman, has changed his mind and now believes that homosexuals should have that privilege. On a widespread basis, that would solve the problem, i.e., women should become lesbians and VOILA! the problem of “unprotected” sex is solved.
The committee members probably lacked the temerity to question the lady witness but a simple check on the Internet alone might have been instructive. From the web-site of Trojan, perhaps the best known conveyor of condoms, one learns that the basic condom costs 43 cents (100-pack) and can be had with free shipping. So… a woman could have sex twice every night (or day, for the frisky ones) for a paltry 86 cents, or less than one-third of the $1,000-per-year cost for fun-and-games. If she’s only interested in once-daily, the saving is obvious, though it must be admitted that the more exotic condoms are more expensive…but these are hard times for everyone and sacrifices have to be made.
It is also learned from the Internet (Cost-helper site) that in most states Walmart, Target and Kroger pharmacies offer a limited selection of generic birth-control pills for $9 a month, or less than that of a burger-and-fries at McDonald’s. That works out to $108 a year, one-tenth of the lady’s claim. If she had been sworn, would the lady have been subject to a perjury charge? Even if the cost were triple this amount, she would have been grossly misleading the panel that sat through that “hearing.”
Predictably, Planned Parenthood, whose chief aim is either obstructing or aborting fetuses, offers discounted birth-control pills to “women who qualify,” presumably only those who are breathing when they apply. So, with the caveat that Limbaugh should have used better language, was he wrong in actually making fun of the whole thing?
The president, showing his disdain for white policemen, put his foot in his mouth when he accounted them as acting stupidly. He showed his disdain for the military when he put his foot in his mouth and apologized for soldiers who probably had no idea about the paper being sacred but were just following orders. It’s a sure bet that they wouldn’t kill an Afghan if they saw him burning Holy Bibles. Obama would have accounted that action as freedom of speech.
In trivializing his office in this latest apology to the lady whose testimony is at least partly sullied with lying, he has reached rock-bottom. Nor did he have any license whatever to apologize for something he didn’t say or to apologize for someone else who was merely using the “freedom of speech” thing, something the president surely believes in.
In the final analysis, one concludes that Obama didn’t give a fig about the lady witness. On his tortured mind was the fact that in an election year he has to appeal to women, notwithstanding that they are already drawn to him like flies to one of those sticky fly-catcher-things people sometimes still use to clear the air of the varmints. To them (the women, not the flies), he is the alpha male “with a heart.” Egad.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Even funnier was the question posed to Newt Gingrich by NBC’s resident Obama propagandist David Gregory on Meet the Press 04 March, to wit, how badly had Limbaugh’s remark hurt the republican chances for winning the presidency, whereupon he received a lecture by Gingrich that almost literally cut him off at the knees. People like slack-jawed Gregory never learn.
The question of the latest apology points to the fact that a heretofore-creeping crudity in the nation has advanced to warp speed. The fact that Obama insists on being apologist-in-chief (though not a constitutional responsibility) had to do with the subject of sex, never mind that he would claim it was all about women’s reproductive rights or health care or whatever. It was occasioned by what had to be one of the silliest appearances before a congressional committee (though not an “official” one in which, presumably, a witness is not sworn) that can be imagined.
The witness, a Georgetown Law student, lamented the fact that birth-control vehicles cost a woman $1,000 a year, making it an unseemly expense. Limbaugh approached what she said from the standpoint of sex only…and that is certainly the way most people would take it. The sex-act is necessary for a birth to be inculcated, the obvious way to avoid that catastrophe simply being not to have “unprotected” sex, ergo, have a supply of either pills or condoms at all times.
In passing, it might be noted that the president, while insisting in 2008 that marriage can be defined only as between a man and woman, has changed his mind and now believes that homosexuals should have that privilege. On a widespread basis, that would solve the problem, i.e., women should become lesbians and VOILA! the problem of “unprotected” sex is solved.
The committee members probably lacked the temerity to question the lady witness but a simple check on the Internet alone might have been instructive. From the web-site of Trojan, perhaps the best known conveyor of condoms, one learns that the basic condom costs 43 cents (100-pack) and can be had with free shipping. So… a woman could have sex twice every night (or day, for the frisky ones) for a paltry 86 cents, or less than one-third of the $1,000-per-year cost for fun-and-games. If she’s only interested in once-daily, the saving is obvious, though it must be admitted that the more exotic condoms are more expensive…but these are hard times for everyone and sacrifices have to be made.
It is also learned from the Internet (Cost-helper site) that in most states Walmart, Target and Kroger pharmacies offer a limited selection of generic birth-control pills for $9 a month, or less than that of a burger-and-fries at McDonald’s. That works out to $108 a year, one-tenth of the lady’s claim. If she had been sworn, would the lady have been subject to a perjury charge? Even if the cost were triple this amount, she would have been grossly misleading the panel that sat through that “hearing.”
Predictably, Planned Parenthood, whose chief aim is either obstructing or aborting fetuses, offers discounted birth-control pills to “women who qualify,” presumably only those who are breathing when they apply. So, with the caveat that Limbaugh should have used better language, was he wrong in actually making fun of the whole thing?
The president, showing his disdain for white policemen, put his foot in his mouth when he accounted them as acting stupidly. He showed his disdain for the military when he put his foot in his mouth and apologized for soldiers who probably had no idea about the paper being sacred but were just following orders. It’s a sure bet that they wouldn’t kill an Afghan if they saw him burning Holy Bibles. Obama would have accounted that action as freedom of speech.
In trivializing his office in this latest apology to the lady whose testimony is at least partly sullied with lying, he has reached rock-bottom. Nor did he have any license whatever to apologize for something he didn’t say or to apologize for someone else who was merely using the “freedom of speech” thing, something the president surely believes in.
In the final analysis, one concludes that Obama didn’t give a fig about the lady witness. On his tortured mind was the fact that in an election year he has to appeal to women, notwithstanding that they are already drawn to him like flies to one of those sticky fly-catcher-things people sometimes still use to clear the air of the varmints. To them (the women, not the flies), he is the alpha male “with a heart.” Egad.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Thursday, March 01, 2012
Friends of Syria - Egad!
According to Lexington Herald-Leader columnist Robert Olson in the 01 March issue, “On Feb. 24, some 50 countries, notably minus Russia and China, calling themselves the ‘Friends of Syria,’ gathered in Tunis calling for more forceful intervention in response to the bloodshed occurring. Saudi Arabia Foreign Minister Saud al-Feisal, the main advocate of Asad's overthrow and the main United States ally in the Middle East, along with Israel and Turkey, called for armed intervention.”
The “Friends of Syria” tag has little to do with the actual relationship between Syria and the other countries. Friends do not call for armed intervention in another friend’s country but that’s neither here nor there. The so-called “friends” are dedicated to the overthrow of Syria President Bashar al-Assad, ostensibly because he is murdering insurgents within Syria though he is not bothering anyone else. Indeed, U.S. President Obama and State Secretary Clinton have publicly called for his departure, the implication being through any means possible.
The Middle East elephant in the living-room is Iran, greatly hated by folks such as the Saudi fat princes, who understand quite well that but for the good graces of George H.W. Bush in 1991, Saddam Hussein would be in Riyadh today and they would be either waiters or wine-tasters, working in the oil-fields or part of the aquifer under the deserts. The current fear is that Iran’s Terrible Twosome of Ayatollah Khameini and Irani butcher/strongman Ahmadinejad will stir up real trouble, perhaps eventuating in doing what Bush stopped Saddam from doing.
So…Syria is of little actual importance or threat; however, it is Iran’s only ally in the Middle East, maybe also a sort of dumping ground for armaments…maybe even the location of Saddam’s WMD not found in Iraq in 2003 and onward. The fat princes don’t give a fig about the Syrians, so disregard any altruistic caterwauling. When they felt threatened enough by al Qaeda thugs a while back, they got tough and ran them out of their doll-house.
The Saudis also invaded tiny, neighboring Bahrain in March 2011, albeit supposedly at the invitation of the Bahraini government, to put down an “Arab Spring” uprising by the Bahraini hoi polloi, so there’s little doubt as to the princes duplicitous ideas about the people’s right to protest. For them, it was wrong in Bahrain last year but it’s okay now in Syria.
The hypocrisy is obvious. Significantly, the governing Muslims in Bahrain, Iraq and Syria were/are in a pronounced religious minority, thus holding on to power by use of force, either theirs or someone else’s, such as in the case of Bahrain most recently. Assad’s Alawite ruling tribe comprises only 10-12% of the population. Sunni Muslims make up 74%, but have no military standing. Saddam’s Sunnis were only 40% of Iraq’s population, while the Shiites made up 60%. This accounts for the bloody payback in Iraq now, as the Shiite government works its will, courtesy Uncle Sam.
But, to the point of intervention! Code for what happened in Tunisia is quite simply that the U.S. should just DO something about evil Assad, such as what it did to Libya through a simple direct order by Obama – bomb the bejesus out of Qaddafi and the Libyans, never mind the Congress or the American people, who were not consulted last March lest Obama’s misplaced and disgraceful effort at being a military leader get unhinged at the gate.
Ironically, the Saudis walked out of the “friends” meeting because of inactivity, i.e., nobody was planning on bombing the bejesus out of Assad’s living-room. What a laugh! The Israelis routinely bomb Syria whenever they figure to destroy a threat to their country. They’re not about to join a full-scale attack, though one never knows what Obama, a loose cannon, might do.
Syria has 304,000 active troops; 4,950 tanks; and 830 aircraft. Saudi Arabia has, respectively, 233,500; 1,305; 1,200, not a small force and its northern-most point is only 150 miles from Damascus. Okay…the princes might figure those odds not good enough to correct the “inactivity.” Turkey has, respectively, 612,900; 4,246; 1,940, and shares a 540-mile border with Syria. On paper at least, it could end the inactivity by invading Syria with its overwhelming force tomorrow.
Not good enough? Put the forces of Saudi Arabia and Turkey together and VOILA! the combined force includes 846,400 troops, 5,551 tanks, and 3,140 aircraft – enough power to blow Syria away in (as Obama said about the seven-month war with Libya) days, not months. So, if the fat princes want to end the inactivity and “friend” Turkey wants to help, there’s the perfect solution. Quit crying about other “friends” not doing anything, and get on with it.
That won’t happen. Two countries which are not “friends of Syria” but are friends of Syria are China and Russia, who do not share the “inactivity” position, meaning that military intervention in Syria could precipitate the next world war. Even Obama probably understands that, though one could wonder if he might order an attack and then go on vacation somewhere to announce it, as was the case with Libya.
So…stay tuned.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
The “Friends of Syria” tag has little to do with the actual relationship between Syria and the other countries. Friends do not call for armed intervention in another friend’s country but that’s neither here nor there. The so-called “friends” are dedicated to the overthrow of Syria President Bashar al-Assad, ostensibly because he is murdering insurgents within Syria though he is not bothering anyone else. Indeed, U.S. President Obama and State Secretary Clinton have publicly called for his departure, the implication being through any means possible.
The Middle East elephant in the living-room is Iran, greatly hated by folks such as the Saudi fat princes, who understand quite well that but for the good graces of George H.W. Bush in 1991, Saddam Hussein would be in Riyadh today and they would be either waiters or wine-tasters, working in the oil-fields or part of the aquifer under the deserts. The current fear is that Iran’s Terrible Twosome of Ayatollah Khameini and Irani butcher/strongman Ahmadinejad will stir up real trouble, perhaps eventuating in doing what Bush stopped Saddam from doing.
So…Syria is of little actual importance or threat; however, it is Iran’s only ally in the Middle East, maybe also a sort of dumping ground for armaments…maybe even the location of Saddam’s WMD not found in Iraq in 2003 and onward. The fat princes don’t give a fig about the Syrians, so disregard any altruistic caterwauling. When they felt threatened enough by al Qaeda thugs a while back, they got tough and ran them out of their doll-house.
The Saudis also invaded tiny, neighboring Bahrain in March 2011, albeit supposedly at the invitation of the Bahraini government, to put down an “Arab Spring” uprising by the Bahraini hoi polloi, so there’s little doubt as to the princes duplicitous ideas about the people’s right to protest. For them, it was wrong in Bahrain last year but it’s okay now in Syria.
The hypocrisy is obvious. Significantly, the governing Muslims in Bahrain, Iraq and Syria were/are in a pronounced religious minority, thus holding on to power by use of force, either theirs or someone else’s, such as in the case of Bahrain most recently. Assad’s Alawite ruling tribe comprises only 10-12% of the population. Sunni Muslims make up 74%, but have no military standing. Saddam’s Sunnis were only 40% of Iraq’s population, while the Shiites made up 60%. This accounts for the bloody payback in Iraq now, as the Shiite government works its will, courtesy Uncle Sam.
But, to the point of intervention! Code for what happened in Tunisia is quite simply that the U.S. should just DO something about evil Assad, such as what it did to Libya through a simple direct order by Obama – bomb the bejesus out of Qaddafi and the Libyans, never mind the Congress or the American people, who were not consulted last March lest Obama’s misplaced and disgraceful effort at being a military leader get unhinged at the gate.
Ironically, the Saudis walked out of the “friends” meeting because of inactivity, i.e., nobody was planning on bombing the bejesus out of Assad’s living-room. What a laugh! The Israelis routinely bomb Syria whenever they figure to destroy a threat to their country. They’re not about to join a full-scale attack, though one never knows what Obama, a loose cannon, might do.
Syria has 304,000 active troops; 4,950 tanks; and 830 aircraft. Saudi Arabia has, respectively, 233,500; 1,305; 1,200, not a small force and its northern-most point is only 150 miles from Damascus. Okay…the princes might figure those odds not good enough to correct the “inactivity.” Turkey has, respectively, 612,900; 4,246; 1,940, and shares a 540-mile border with Syria. On paper at least, it could end the inactivity by invading Syria with its overwhelming force tomorrow.
Not good enough? Put the forces of Saudi Arabia and Turkey together and VOILA! the combined force includes 846,400 troops, 5,551 tanks, and 3,140 aircraft – enough power to blow Syria away in (as Obama said about the seven-month war with Libya) days, not months. So, if the fat princes want to end the inactivity and “friend” Turkey wants to help, there’s the perfect solution. Quit crying about other “friends” not doing anything, and get on with it.
That won’t happen. Two countries which are not “friends of Syria” but are friends of Syria are China and Russia, who do not share the “inactivity” position, meaning that military intervention in Syria could precipitate the next world war. Even Obama probably understands that, though one could wonder if he might order an attack and then go on vacation somewhere to announce it, as was the case with Libya.
So…stay tuned.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Monday, February 27, 2012
Clinton Nannies Assad
This is from Bloomberg of 28 March 2011: “‘No’,” [State Secretary] Clinton said when asked on the CBS program ‘Face the Nation’ if the U.S. would intervene in Syria’s unrest.”
This is what State Secretary Clinton said in Rabat, Morocco, on 26 February 2012: “Syrians in the military and business who still support President Bashar al-Assad should turn against him. The longer you support the regime’s campaign of violence against your brothers and sisters, the more it will stain your honor.”
She apparently went from making a statement in a press conference to speaking directly to selected people in Syria, about 3,000 miles away, much as a schoolmarm might have done in a one-room school out in the boondocks circa 1905. She had dropped in on official business (groundbreaking for a new embassy) in Rabat after starting yet another “tour” in Tunisia and also hitting Algeria in an apparent effort to further lionize the “Arab Spring” uprisings of last year, which began in Tunisia.
While the secretary continues her life as guest of the U.S. Air Force, spending about as much time being pandered-to in their huge planes as on the ground most anywhere but Washington, she represents what probably 99% of the people in the Muslim world (maybe the whole world) would call the “ugly American.”
The idea that she should lecture anyone in Syria concerning violence is her way of telling the Syrians that they’re too dumb to remember that her president, without any constitutional or otherwise legal authorization declared war on Libya last March (same month she was sanitizing Assad) and began systematically killing Libyan women and children ostensibly because Qaddafi was doing what Assad is doing, i.e., trying to protect his turf in the only way Muslims expect, to wit, killing other Muslims, with victory going to whoever is left standing.
This would be comedic if it weren’t so serious. One has the feeling that everyone from tinhorn dictators throughout the world to Olde-Europe’s well-educated but unbelievably misled bureaucrats/citizens is laughing behind Clinton’s back and wondering why her president spends about all his time campaigning (enjoying the almost daily hospitality of Air Force #1 at taxpayers’ expense) instead of showing his presumed superior intelligence by actually impressing…just anyone, or getting anything done about the miserable recession that’s still in place.
Obama and Clinton are in a box built by themselves regarding Syria, all their words now, as the apostle Paul would have it, as “sounding brass.” Libya had an army of 76,000, a pushover for a few units of SEALS. Assad has 295,000 active troops. If Obama was not willing to put “boots on the ground” (just kill ’em from the air) in Libya, does anyone believe he will wax serious about Syria? Of course not, but in predictable inane utterance he has told Assad that he has to go. One suspects he is not willing this election year to con NATO into more atrocious behavior while “leading from behind” in order to make that happen.
With Americans being shot in their respective backs by Afghan soldiers, he’s busy apologizing to Karzai when he ought to have the guts to tell his military advisers to form plans immediately for precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan, whether declaring victory or not and notwithstanding anything his military gurus tell him about “winning.” This won’t happen, of course, especially since Senators, McCain, Graham and Lieberman might call him a sissy. Making war is one thing, but allowing supposed “friends” to work their will on Americans like “shooting fish in a barrel” is unacceptable.
Obama has the strange notion that civilized people can parley with uncivilized people, blatantly exhibiting this trait in glibly insisting in his campaign years ago that he would sit down with Iran’s Ahmadinejad and just make things “all well.” Muslim governments are made up of bloodthirsty uncivilized leaders who do not take a back seat to even the equally uncivilized Japanese sadist-leaders of World War II, to whom animal behavior against defenseless POWs and Chinese citizens was considered normal. Think the “Rape of Nanking” of 1937-38, with half the Chinese city’s population murdered (300,000 souls) in cold blood. Shades of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, who wasted 400,000 fellow Muslims, though it took him a bit longer!
The Obama/Clinton axis is mired in ignorance of how the Muslim jihad-mind works. Both would have been much better served in the last three years by keeping their mouths shut about the Middle East and let nature take its course, something that will happen anyway no matter how much they caterwaul. They seem to have tongues tied in the middle and loose at both ends, constantly telling this or that foreign leader exactly how to govern and exactly when to get out of Dodge.
In Obama’s case, he decided to pull a “shootout at the OK Corral” with respect to Libya, except that his side had all the guns. Disgusting!
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
This is what State Secretary Clinton said in Rabat, Morocco, on 26 February 2012: “Syrians in the military and business who still support President Bashar al-Assad should turn against him. The longer you support the regime’s campaign of violence against your brothers and sisters, the more it will stain your honor.”
She apparently went from making a statement in a press conference to speaking directly to selected people in Syria, about 3,000 miles away, much as a schoolmarm might have done in a one-room school out in the boondocks circa 1905. She had dropped in on official business (groundbreaking for a new embassy) in Rabat after starting yet another “tour” in Tunisia and also hitting Algeria in an apparent effort to further lionize the “Arab Spring” uprisings of last year, which began in Tunisia.
While the secretary continues her life as guest of the U.S. Air Force, spending about as much time being pandered-to in their huge planes as on the ground most anywhere but Washington, she represents what probably 99% of the people in the Muslim world (maybe the whole world) would call the “ugly American.”
The idea that she should lecture anyone in Syria concerning violence is her way of telling the Syrians that they’re too dumb to remember that her president, without any constitutional or otherwise legal authorization declared war on Libya last March (same month she was sanitizing Assad) and began systematically killing Libyan women and children ostensibly because Qaddafi was doing what Assad is doing, i.e., trying to protect his turf in the only way Muslims expect, to wit, killing other Muslims, with victory going to whoever is left standing.
This would be comedic if it weren’t so serious. One has the feeling that everyone from tinhorn dictators throughout the world to Olde-Europe’s well-educated but unbelievably misled bureaucrats/citizens is laughing behind Clinton’s back and wondering why her president spends about all his time campaigning (enjoying the almost daily hospitality of Air Force #1 at taxpayers’ expense) instead of showing his presumed superior intelligence by actually impressing…just anyone, or getting anything done about the miserable recession that’s still in place.
Obama and Clinton are in a box built by themselves regarding Syria, all their words now, as the apostle Paul would have it, as “sounding brass.” Libya had an army of 76,000, a pushover for a few units of SEALS. Assad has 295,000 active troops. If Obama was not willing to put “boots on the ground” (just kill ’em from the air) in Libya, does anyone believe he will wax serious about Syria? Of course not, but in predictable inane utterance he has told Assad that he has to go. One suspects he is not willing this election year to con NATO into more atrocious behavior while “leading from behind” in order to make that happen.
With Americans being shot in their respective backs by Afghan soldiers, he’s busy apologizing to Karzai when he ought to have the guts to tell his military advisers to form plans immediately for precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan, whether declaring victory or not and notwithstanding anything his military gurus tell him about “winning.” This won’t happen, of course, especially since Senators, McCain, Graham and Lieberman might call him a sissy. Making war is one thing, but allowing supposed “friends” to work their will on Americans like “shooting fish in a barrel” is unacceptable.
Obama has the strange notion that civilized people can parley with uncivilized people, blatantly exhibiting this trait in glibly insisting in his campaign years ago that he would sit down with Iran’s Ahmadinejad and just make things “all well.” Muslim governments are made up of bloodthirsty uncivilized leaders who do not take a back seat to even the equally uncivilized Japanese sadist-leaders of World War II, to whom animal behavior against defenseless POWs and Chinese citizens was considered normal. Think the “Rape of Nanking” of 1937-38, with half the Chinese city’s population murdered (300,000 souls) in cold blood. Shades of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, who wasted 400,000 fellow Muslims, though it took him a bit longer!
The Obama/Clinton axis is mired in ignorance of how the Muslim jihad-mind works. Both would have been much better served in the last three years by keeping their mouths shut about the Middle East and let nature take its course, something that will happen anyway no matter how much they caterwaul. They seem to have tongues tied in the middle and loose at both ends, constantly telling this or that foreign leader exactly how to govern and exactly when to get out of Dodge.
In Obama’s case, he decided to pull a “shootout at the OK Corral” with respect to Libya, except that his side had all the guns. Disgusting!
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Friday, February 24, 2012
Obama's Inconvenient Mouth & Syria
It’s been interesting to watch an obviously worn-out State Secretary Clinton and others in the administration caterwauling and otherwise expending great efforts at verbosity in attempting to work-up some sort of worldwide animus toward Syria, particularly its president, Bashar Assad, whose army and air force are decimating parts of the Syrian populace, mostly in Homs (Hama), the city virtually demolished in February 1982 by his father, Hafez al Assad, when he was president.
Bashar Assad is acting in retaliation to insurrectionists as was the case with his father in 1982, when armed Islamic militants tried to take over the country. The death toll in Hama was somewhere around 20,000 by the time the dust cleared. Hafez Assad himself came to power in 1970 by undermining the then government, just as Saddam Hussein did in Iraq in 1979, as well as the ayatollah Khomeini in Iran the same year. Conclusion: This is the way things are routinely done in Muslim-dominated governments, the rest of the world’s condemnation notwithstanding.
So far, the report is that some 7,000 have died in Syria, not that this figure can be trusted. Secretary Clinton classified Bashar Assad as a reformer as recently as last year, so her bona fides for expressing any opinion are questionable. Actually, his father brought about significant reforms, too, and even supported the UN-sanctioned Gulf War in 1991. In the process, he also avoided assassination attempts, interfered in Lebanon, and, of course, maintained a hatred for Israel, all the while hoping to get back the Golan Heights, lost to Israel in 1967 when he was Syria’s defense minister.
The long-and-short of the matter is that this administration hasn’t any more clue about the Muslim countries than Jimmy Carter had in 1978-80, when he allowed American hostages to rot in Tehran for 14 months. Barack Obama showed his extreme ignorance this week in apologizing to Afghanistan because a bunch of Korans got burned by mistake, the upshot being an Afghan soldier murdering two American GIs in cold blood.
Instead of apologizing, Obama should have enough sense by now to understand that the Muslims consider an apology a sign of weakness. He should have warned Karzai and Mullah Omar that drastic measures would be taken if such a thing should happen again. But, apologizing to especially Muslim countries is a fine art with the president, raised a Muslim and showing it. Can anyone imagine action like that taken in this country if a gaggle of atheists burned some Bibles?
Contrarily, they would probably have been applauded by the mainstream press for having such mental acuity and courage, with the president chiming in on freedom of speech. One remembers the outright lie reported by Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff in 2005 regarding the flushing down the toilet of Korans at Gitmo, the upshot being that 15 Afghanis were killed, apparently Afghans killing Afghans in a blind rage at the U.S. Of course, Isikoff, instead of being hounded out of his profession for such a colossal and sanguinary blunder (as Dan Rather eventually was), now works at NBC, Obama’s prime propaganda-arm.
Never realizing that the end would be worse than the beginning, as anyone with a smattering of understanding knew at the time, Obama publicly encouraged the so-called “Arab Spring” last year and even called for the replacement or murder of some Middle East despots. The results in Egypt, for example, have been disastrous, with the loss of a valuable ally and the Muslim Brotherhood taking over the country, i.e., if the army ever lets go. The people riot in the streets and continue in whatever suffering (or worse) than they had before the great awakening.
Assad has watched this and understands that the militant (Sharia-Law-driven) Islamic boneheads (yep…in Hama again) mean to take over his country, not that his chief ally, Iran, is any improvement. He’s wily enough to get China and Russia on his side, thereby being able to thumb his nose at Obama, who has become the laughing-stock of the world for his unpredictable antics and mindless apologies all around.
Who would have thought that an American president, for instance, would be dumb enough to bypass Congress entirely and take up war against Libya, population 2 million less than that of New York City, for absolutely no identifiable reason at all, except that Qaddafi was mean to his people, just the same as Assad? Flash forward to now and find the whole world looking to Obama to set Syria straight just like he did Libya, in which there is now no identifiable government.
This is from the Associated Press of 18 August 2011: “In a stinging written statement, Obama says Assad has overseen a vicious onslaught of his people as they protest for freedoms. He says the Syrian people should decide their country’s future and Assad is standing in their way and must go.” This is what he said about Qaddafi before personally attacking Libya and killing no telling how many Libyans. So…what’s stopping him from carrying through in Syria, since he obviously has decided to run that part of the world while he’s apologizing to it and running his inconvenient mouth at the same time?
Two American soldiers are murdered in Afghanistan and the U.S president is apologizing? Obama is a disgrace and has absolutely no understanding of the Middle East, Muslims, or even his Constitutional responsibilities, such as those regarding how war can be made. To its eternal shame, the Congress is even more pitiful than Obama.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Bashar Assad is acting in retaliation to insurrectionists as was the case with his father in 1982, when armed Islamic militants tried to take over the country. The death toll in Hama was somewhere around 20,000 by the time the dust cleared. Hafez Assad himself came to power in 1970 by undermining the then government, just as Saddam Hussein did in Iraq in 1979, as well as the ayatollah Khomeini in Iran the same year. Conclusion: This is the way things are routinely done in Muslim-dominated governments, the rest of the world’s condemnation notwithstanding.
So far, the report is that some 7,000 have died in Syria, not that this figure can be trusted. Secretary Clinton classified Bashar Assad as a reformer as recently as last year, so her bona fides for expressing any opinion are questionable. Actually, his father brought about significant reforms, too, and even supported the UN-sanctioned Gulf War in 1991. In the process, he also avoided assassination attempts, interfered in Lebanon, and, of course, maintained a hatred for Israel, all the while hoping to get back the Golan Heights, lost to Israel in 1967 when he was Syria’s defense minister.
The long-and-short of the matter is that this administration hasn’t any more clue about the Muslim countries than Jimmy Carter had in 1978-80, when he allowed American hostages to rot in Tehran for 14 months. Barack Obama showed his extreme ignorance this week in apologizing to Afghanistan because a bunch of Korans got burned by mistake, the upshot being an Afghan soldier murdering two American GIs in cold blood.
Instead of apologizing, Obama should have enough sense by now to understand that the Muslims consider an apology a sign of weakness. He should have warned Karzai and Mullah Omar that drastic measures would be taken if such a thing should happen again. But, apologizing to especially Muslim countries is a fine art with the president, raised a Muslim and showing it. Can anyone imagine action like that taken in this country if a gaggle of atheists burned some Bibles?
Contrarily, they would probably have been applauded by the mainstream press for having such mental acuity and courage, with the president chiming in on freedom of speech. One remembers the outright lie reported by Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff in 2005 regarding the flushing down the toilet of Korans at Gitmo, the upshot being that 15 Afghanis were killed, apparently Afghans killing Afghans in a blind rage at the U.S. Of course, Isikoff, instead of being hounded out of his profession for such a colossal and sanguinary blunder (as Dan Rather eventually was), now works at NBC, Obama’s prime propaganda-arm.
Never realizing that the end would be worse than the beginning, as anyone with a smattering of understanding knew at the time, Obama publicly encouraged the so-called “Arab Spring” last year and even called for the replacement or murder of some Middle East despots. The results in Egypt, for example, have been disastrous, with the loss of a valuable ally and the Muslim Brotherhood taking over the country, i.e., if the army ever lets go. The people riot in the streets and continue in whatever suffering (or worse) than they had before the great awakening.
Assad has watched this and understands that the militant (Sharia-Law-driven) Islamic boneheads (yep…in Hama again) mean to take over his country, not that his chief ally, Iran, is any improvement. He’s wily enough to get China and Russia on his side, thereby being able to thumb his nose at Obama, who has become the laughing-stock of the world for his unpredictable antics and mindless apologies all around.
Who would have thought that an American president, for instance, would be dumb enough to bypass Congress entirely and take up war against Libya, population 2 million less than that of New York City, for absolutely no identifiable reason at all, except that Qaddafi was mean to his people, just the same as Assad? Flash forward to now and find the whole world looking to Obama to set Syria straight just like he did Libya, in which there is now no identifiable government.
This is from the Associated Press of 18 August 2011: “In a stinging written statement, Obama says Assad has overseen a vicious onslaught of his people as they protest for freedoms. He says the Syrian people should decide their country’s future and Assad is standing in their way and must go.” This is what he said about Qaddafi before personally attacking Libya and killing no telling how many Libyans. So…what’s stopping him from carrying through in Syria, since he obviously has decided to run that part of the world while he’s apologizing to it and running his inconvenient mouth at the same time?
Two American soldiers are murdered in Afghanistan and the U.S president is apologizing? Obama is a disgrace and has absolutely no understanding of the Middle East, Muslims, or even his Constitutional responsibilities, such as those regarding how war can be made. To its eternal shame, the Congress is even more pitiful than Obama.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Sunday, February 19, 2012
The Professor & the Slave-mongering Republicans
The Lexington [Ky.] Herald-Leader seems to pick a University of Kentucky professor about each month or so to deliver a liberal/anti-republican/rant about something-or-other (doesn’t matter much just what…anything goes). In the 17 February issue, history professor Ron Formisano was the agitator du jour, using as his subject (at least in the headline) “states rights.” Of course, “slave past” also appeared in the headline, so one could see where this was going, especially during “black history” month.
In the H-L of 21 December, UK professor Robert Olson delivered the rant du jour, making the statement that four million people died during the Civil War to save the Union. They were located in the North, of course, which had a population then of 22 million, meaning close to a fifth of the Northerners died at a ratio of about one white northerner for each freed slave. Olson’s field of expertise is the Middle East, so perhaps he could be cut some slack as a history revisionist, such activity being in vogue on campuses these days. I’m still laughing, though.
Formisano: “During the decades before the Civil War, the slave South became obsessed with states' rights and stepped up its demands to limit Congress's ability to regulate the spread of slavery. … This [current] obsessive outcry, located primarily (and ironically) in the Republican Party, recalls the posture of the slavery-dominated antebellum democracy.”
A caveat is in order, to wit, my great-grandfather and two great-uncles arrived in Kentucky from England in 1857, could not by law be drafted, owned no slaves and volunteered in the Union army. My resentment, as a white person, at being constantly blamed for slavery because of my forbearers – especially during the month of Washington and Lincoln, now known as “black history month” – knows no bounds.
My great-grandfather was wounded once and critically ill once, affording him a pension. Moreover, the consensus probably is that only about 26% of all households in what Formisano calls the “slave South” actually included slaves. So, that other 74% of confederate soldiers were actually fighting for states rights, Formisano’s denigration of them notwithstanding.
Formisano: “The conservatives among the nation's founders wanted a strong central government. But these nationalists, in crafting our constitution, realized that widespread opposition to what contemporaries called ‘consolidation’ existed throughout a new republic born in rebellion against an empire.” The first part of that rant is patently untrue, as proven by the second part. Revising history is ugly on its face but Formisano is not much good at it.
The last thing the founders wanted was inordinate power in the hands of the few in federal government. All one has to do to discover this is read Article I, Section 8, and all of Article II of the U.S Constitution. The federal government was designed to provide for taxes, currency, foreign affairs, interstate issues, courts, and especially defense (the vast preponderance of the section) and little else. Amendment 10 awarded the responsibility of about everything else to the states (states rights, in other words).
Formisano is s-o-o-o unoriginal. When folks want to denigrate an entity, they sometimes juxtapose it/him/her with Hitler. Formisano used this tactic in comparing the evil Republican Party of today with the “slavery-dominated antebellum democracy” or with the “slave South.” One wonders why he didn’t throw in Mao-Tse-Tung while he was at it, or maybe Barack Obama, who by executive order last March started his own massacre in Libya, announcing it on his vacation in Brazil and then leading from behind. That’s real class.
Inordinate centralized government has become such a problem now that the big news of the week happened in North Carolina, when a government agent blew into an elementary-school cafeteria for a spot-on inspection of lunches the pre-school children had brought from home. A four-year-old was guilty of having only a turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips, and apple juice, which sounds quite nutritious but the intrepid inspector insisted that the girl eat three chicken nuggets. At least she didn’t have to eat two Turtle Doves and a Partridge in a pear tree.
It would be hard to make this stuff up but the government czars in Washington are running just about everything now from how much salt can go into a hamburger to legalizing light-bulbs to the proper procedures to follow in helping old codgers decide when they’ve had enough and would just as soon opt out, part of the wondrous Obamacare.
The federal government is overwhelmingly too big now, not least because it’s run mainly by career politicians, not statesmen, as was the case with the founders. The solons made sure in Amendment XXII in 1951 to limit the president to two terms, but made just as sure not to do that for Congress-people, whom they (especially themselves) deemed to approach near divinity status, not to mention greedily grasping great salaries and unbelievable perks, which they and their followers in the august halls have awarded to themselves.
Federal responsibilities in the Departments of Education, Energy, HHS, and HUD could be far better handled on the state level. The “No Child Left Behind” fiasco is a good example of just how the federal government can completely botch an enterprise. For good or ill, Kentucky has been granted an exemption from that or some form of it. The damage has been done, of course.
One suspects some of the students at the university can read Formisano and also read between the lines, discovering fringe-lunatic liberalism, the socialist approach championed by Obama, for the subversion it is.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
In the H-L of 21 December, UK professor Robert Olson delivered the rant du jour, making the statement that four million people died during the Civil War to save the Union. They were located in the North, of course, which had a population then of 22 million, meaning close to a fifth of the Northerners died at a ratio of about one white northerner for each freed slave. Olson’s field of expertise is the Middle East, so perhaps he could be cut some slack as a history revisionist, such activity being in vogue on campuses these days. I’m still laughing, though.
Formisano: “During the decades before the Civil War, the slave South became obsessed with states' rights and stepped up its demands to limit Congress's ability to regulate the spread of slavery. … This [current] obsessive outcry, located primarily (and ironically) in the Republican Party, recalls the posture of the slavery-dominated antebellum democracy.”
A caveat is in order, to wit, my great-grandfather and two great-uncles arrived in Kentucky from England in 1857, could not by law be drafted, owned no slaves and volunteered in the Union army. My resentment, as a white person, at being constantly blamed for slavery because of my forbearers – especially during the month of Washington and Lincoln, now known as “black history month” – knows no bounds.
My great-grandfather was wounded once and critically ill once, affording him a pension. Moreover, the consensus probably is that only about 26% of all households in what Formisano calls the “slave South” actually included slaves. So, that other 74% of confederate soldiers were actually fighting for states rights, Formisano’s denigration of them notwithstanding.
Formisano: “The conservatives among the nation's founders wanted a strong central government. But these nationalists, in crafting our constitution, realized that widespread opposition to what contemporaries called ‘consolidation’ existed throughout a new republic born in rebellion against an empire.” The first part of that rant is patently untrue, as proven by the second part. Revising history is ugly on its face but Formisano is not much good at it.
The last thing the founders wanted was inordinate power in the hands of the few in federal government. All one has to do to discover this is read Article I, Section 8, and all of Article II of the U.S Constitution. The federal government was designed to provide for taxes, currency, foreign affairs, interstate issues, courts, and especially defense (the vast preponderance of the section) and little else. Amendment 10 awarded the responsibility of about everything else to the states (states rights, in other words).
Formisano is s-o-o-o unoriginal. When folks want to denigrate an entity, they sometimes juxtapose it/him/her with Hitler. Formisano used this tactic in comparing the evil Republican Party of today with the “slavery-dominated antebellum democracy” or with the “slave South.” One wonders why he didn’t throw in Mao-Tse-Tung while he was at it, or maybe Barack Obama, who by executive order last March started his own massacre in Libya, announcing it on his vacation in Brazil and then leading from behind. That’s real class.
Inordinate centralized government has become such a problem now that the big news of the week happened in North Carolina, when a government agent blew into an elementary-school cafeteria for a spot-on inspection of lunches the pre-school children had brought from home. A four-year-old was guilty of having only a turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips, and apple juice, which sounds quite nutritious but the intrepid inspector insisted that the girl eat three chicken nuggets. At least she didn’t have to eat two Turtle Doves and a Partridge in a pear tree.
It would be hard to make this stuff up but the government czars in Washington are running just about everything now from how much salt can go into a hamburger to legalizing light-bulbs to the proper procedures to follow in helping old codgers decide when they’ve had enough and would just as soon opt out, part of the wondrous Obamacare.
The federal government is overwhelmingly too big now, not least because it’s run mainly by career politicians, not statesmen, as was the case with the founders. The solons made sure in Amendment XXII in 1951 to limit the president to two terms, but made just as sure not to do that for Congress-people, whom they (especially themselves) deemed to approach near divinity status, not to mention greedily grasping great salaries and unbelievable perks, which they and their followers in the august halls have awarded to themselves.
Federal responsibilities in the Departments of Education, Energy, HHS, and HUD could be far better handled on the state level. The “No Child Left Behind” fiasco is a good example of just how the federal government can completely botch an enterprise. For good or ill, Kentucky has been granted an exemption from that or some form of it. The damage has been done, of course.
One suspects some of the students at the university can read Formisano and also read between the lines, discovering fringe-lunatic liberalism, the socialist approach championed by Obama, for the subversion it is.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Friday, February 17, 2012
"Horsy Set" Rides Again!
Governor Beshear and all the other members of the “horsy set” have made it as a prime objective of the drive to legalize Kentucky casinos the huge infilling of the state coffers with taxes generated by the gambling industry and confiscated by the state. This is a bunch of baloney, of course. These folks have it in mind to make boatloads of money for…yep…members of the horsy set.
Yeah…there will be some revenue as the state “empowers” the operators to make some bucks off the backs of the “gamers,” as Beshear would call the suckers, but make no mistake about it. The main objective is the protecting and enlarging of the horse industry, which, according to the horsy set, employs 100,000 people, as if anybody in his right mind actually believes that. These track folks couldn’t turn up 100,000 names – at least legal names – if they had to.
Most of those 100,000 folks would be employed in the Bluegrass and the so-called “Golden Triangle” bounded roughly by Lexington, Louisville and Covington/Newport. Somehow, one believes the economy in this area would be far different if those workers actually exist. In any case, they wouldn’t be doing much better than minimum wage, if that, so even if the numbers were true, they represent negligible amounts of income taxes to the state. Compare the average hourly wage at Georgetown Toyota – at least $30 plus perks that up it to about $48 – and see the difference. The UAW folks in Louisville come in at about $69 per hour total.
The proof that the horsy set has its collective mind on money for the horsy set is seen in the governor’s proposition for a Constitutional amendment as delivered through legislator Thayer – five casinos at the racetracks and two others not within 50 or so miles of a track. These two others, by virtue of cronyism, would likely belong to the horsy set, also, with the books out of sight, of course.
One presumes that even the horsy set must figure that casinos are not all that great since it recommends only seven for the WHOLE STATE! That’s only one casino for every 570,000 people or so. Even the horsy set would agree that alcoholic beverages cause more death and destruction than anything else in Kentucky but the group probably would not take issue with the fact that the stuff is sold in groceries and in establishments on virtually every street in much of Kentucky, with more localities legalizing booze practically every week. There are hundreds or thousands (who’s counting) of alcohol oases in the state.
So…why just seven casinos, which, of course, do no harm at all? After all, lottery tickets can be bought on every corner, so why not a casino on every corner. The “game” is the same and every sucker should be treated with respect. To disallow him the same privilege to lose his shirt as mostly just those who go watch the ponies while they lose their shirts is actually – DISCRIMINATORY, the vilest and most often used adjective in the lexicon these days.
The answer is obvious, of course, especially taking into account that graft and corruption are hallmarks of both the legislative and administrative branches these days. One has only to look at the redistricting fiascoes foisted upon the population recently to see just how crafty and cynical the solons are. Simply moving a legislator 200 miles from his district is not exactly what one considers copasetic, but then what does an average citizen know? Besides, that legislator’s former district included a (gasp) racetrack, though in fairness it must be said that his new district 200 miles removed (gasp) also includes a racetrack…such thoughtfulness!
This is not even to mention the shenanigans vis-à-vis the Congressional representation. That new map appears as what one would think a kindergarten finger-painter might deliver. It’s designed to keep a republican, at all costs, from getting his hands on the Sixth District…maybe even the Fourth, as well. The courts may be attacked by Truth and change things…but, who knows?
But one digresses! The horsy set knows that fairness would involve empowering all would-be casino-operators to have that privilege, about the same as the lottery folks. This means, of course, an inordinate, absolutely prohibitive diminution of racetrack proceeds since the vast majority of folks would not bother to drive out to racetracks when they could just truck on down to the nearest convenience store and play the slots or even get into an exciting game of blackjack that might amuse them for hours while they lose their shirts.
Just think what a mini-roulette operation might take in at a gas station while one’s car is being serviced. There’s much money in “them thar hills” just waiting to go to the operators…and the state, of course, to save the schools, or something like that…doesn’t really matter. The horsy set should get in line…or the guv and cronies should be forced to attempt putting on “straight faces,” though to do so might cause a massive number of jaw-breakers.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Yeah…there will be some revenue as the state “empowers” the operators to make some bucks off the backs of the “gamers,” as Beshear would call the suckers, but make no mistake about it. The main objective is the protecting and enlarging of the horse industry, which, according to the horsy set, employs 100,000 people, as if anybody in his right mind actually believes that. These track folks couldn’t turn up 100,000 names – at least legal names – if they had to.
Most of those 100,000 folks would be employed in the Bluegrass and the so-called “Golden Triangle” bounded roughly by Lexington, Louisville and Covington/Newport. Somehow, one believes the economy in this area would be far different if those workers actually exist. In any case, they wouldn’t be doing much better than minimum wage, if that, so even if the numbers were true, they represent negligible amounts of income taxes to the state. Compare the average hourly wage at Georgetown Toyota – at least $30 plus perks that up it to about $48 – and see the difference. The UAW folks in Louisville come in at about $69 per hour total.
The proof that the horsy set has its collective mind on money for the horsy set is seen in the governor’s proposition for a Constitutional amendment as delivered through legislator Thayer – five casinos at the racetracks and two others not within 50 or so miles of a track. These two others, by virtue of cronyism, would likely belong to the horsy set, also, with the books out of sight, of course.
One presumes that even the horsy set must figure that casinos are not all that great since it recommends only seven for the WHOLE STATE! That’s only one casino for every 570,000 people or so. Even the horsy set would agree that alcoholic beverages cause more death and destruction than anything else in Kentucky but the group probably would not take issue with the fact that the stuff is sold in groceries and in establishments on virtually every street in much of Kentucky, with more localities legalizing booze practically every week. There are hundreds or thousands (who’s counting) of alcohol oases in the state.
So…why just seven casinos, which, of course, do no harm at all? After all, lottery tickets can be bought on every corner, so why not a casino on every corner. The “game” is the same and every sucker should be treated with respect. To disallow him the same privilege to lose his shirt as mostly just those who go watch the ponies while they lose their shirts is actually – DISCRIMINATORY, the vilest and most often used adjective in the lexicon these days.
The answer is obvious, of course, especially taking into account that graft and corruption are hallmarks of both the legislative and administrative branches these days. One has only to look at the redistricting fiascoes foisted upon the population recently to see just how crafty and cynical the solons are. Simply moving a legislator 200 miles from his district is not exactly what one considers copasetic, but then what does an average citizen know? Besides, that legislator’s former district included a (gasp) racetrack, though in fairness it must be said that his new district 200 miles removed (gasp) also includes a racetrack…such thoughtfulness!
This is not even to mention the shenanigans vis-à-vis the Congressional representation. That new map appears as what one would think a kindergarten finger-painter might deliver. It’s designed to keep a republican, at all costs, from getting his hands on the Sixth District…maybe even the Fourth, as well. The courts may be attacked by Truth and change things…but, who knows?
But one digresses! The horsy set knows that fairness would involve empowering all would-be casino-operators to have that privilege, about the same as the lottery folks. This means, of course, an inordinate, absolutely prohibitive diminution of racetrack proceeds since the vast majority of folks would not bother to drive out to racetracks when they could just truck on down to the nearest convenience store and play the slots or even get into an exciting game of blackjack that might amuse them for hours while they lose their shirts.
Just think what a mini-roulette operation might take in at a gas station while one’s car is being serviced. There’s much money in “them thar hills” just waiting to go to the operators…and the state, of course, to save the schools, or something like that…doesn’t really matter. The horsy set should get in line…or the guv and cronies should be forced to attempt putting on “straight faces,” though to do so might cause a massive number of jaw-breakers.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
The Editorialist & Procreation Politics
The uproar over “procreation politics” has been interesting, not least because it’s based by the liberal establishment on the fact that pregnancy is a disease and that birth control vehicles form the vaccine against it. This makes pregnancy a health issue, though births do not usually mean dire disease or death for mothers in probably 99% of cases. The cynicism of the left is pointed up by Lexington Herald-Leader editorial-writer Jamie Lucke (15 February).
In her final paragraph, Lucke writes (actually states the obvious) that “contraception is cheaper than paying for a pregnancy and birth.” Prior to that, she rails against the Catholic bishops for attempting to impose their will on the public…or at least the women of the public, comparing their position to Sharia Law, which is a tad more sanguinary in its treatment of women, just stoning or beheading them for whatever is the crime du jour, adultery, fornication and abortion being certain winners.
Well…Lucke has a point with regard to contraceptives and the government, the subject of her piece, though not about pregnancy as a disease but about pregnancy as an inconvenience, the termination of which can save billions of government dollars. In 2007, last available year for figures, there were 231 abortions for every 1,000 live births. The vast majority were to unmarried women (74% of whites, 82% of blacks), meaning (the poverty-stricken single-mom thing) that a huge number of both babies and single moms would be on the dole if not for the abortions.
This has been the case since especially 1973, the year of Roe/Wade, meaning that these folks have been living off the fruits of the labors of other people (taxes) for some 40 years now. The current numbers, however, don’t even approach the banner year of 1984, when there were 364 abortions per 1,000 live births. Just think of the savings since then. In 1970, there were only 52 cost-saving abortions per 1,000 live births, hardly worth thinking about. The dear little expendable fetuses might just as well have lived for all the good their demise would have done the government.
Abortions since 1973 number about 50 million or so, give or take a few thousand fetuses here or there but there’s more to it, as Lucke certainly knows with respect to savings. Just those abortions amount to a great deal but then the procedures have been in place for two generations, meaning that those aborted in the first 20 years would have been having their own families now at about the average U.S. rate of 2.1 children per family. So, add a huge mostly poverty-stricken- single-moms-and-babies percentage of another 40 million or so and…well, the savings have simply been astronomical.
The president may be emulating China in attempting to determine the proper family-size, albeit in a more sanguine way, i.e., not by throwing couples in jail for having more than one child. He’s attempting to give the taxpayers that option through mandated contraception – brilliant, as Lucke would probably agree. Deficit-reduction would be a cakewalk if he could do this, thereby disarming those mean-spirited republicans who are not in either his intellectual or morality league.
This is vintage Lucke regarding employer plans: “Because only women use prescription contraceptives [the vaccine], denying this coverage is gender discrimination.” Since men do not use prescription contraceptives but are forced to pay for the women’s use of same (insurance premiums or taxes), that sort of seems like gender-discrimination, too, but who’s counting?
As in the case of most liberal editorial-writers, Lucke misses the actual point, to wit, that any freedom, whether religious or otherwise and which does not harm another citizen, that is taken from a citizen is done in violation of the Constitution. A woman’s right to privacy was the big argument in Roe/Wade, but how does that play out with regard to the privacy of others? Abortion involved the physical aspect (freedom of privacy); however, mandates directly contravening doctrinal beliefs that have no adverse impact on others involves freedom of religion. This is more than dollars and cents, but editorial-writers may not have noticed.
Mandating healthcare gave the government direct control over the citizen’s right to life, let alone liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Mandating contraception-acquisition is in the same league. This is meddling with citizen freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution, but that is precisely the agenda of Obama and the left, people like Lucke – getting rid of the Constitution as a governing document because it militates against centralized, federal control of every facet of a citizen’s existence.
It has been obvious from the beginning of his presidency that Obama intends to destroy Constitutional government, the thing that has made this country the envy of the world. The elections this year for both the presidency and the Congress will comprise a watershed development. Four more years to destroy the American way of life is unthinkable.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
In her final paragraph, Lucke writes (actually states the obvious) that “contraception is cheaper than paying for a pregnancy and birth.” Prior to that, she rails against the Catholic bishops for attempting to impose their will on the public…or at least the women of the public, comparing their position to Sharia Law, which is a tad more sanguinary in its treatment of women, just stoning or beheading them for whatever is the crime du jour, adultery, fornication and abortion being certain winners.
Well…Lucke has a point with regard to contraceptives and the government, the subject of her piece, though not about pregnancy as a disease but about pregnancy as an inconvenience, the termination of which can save billions of government dollars. In 2007, last available year for figures, there were 231 abortions for every 1,000 live births. The vast majority were to unmarried women (74% of whites, 82% of blacks), meaning (the poverty-stricken single-mom thing) that a huge number of both babies and single moms would be on the dole if not for the abortions.
This has been the case since especially 1973, the year of Roe/Wade, meaning that these folks have been living off the fruits of the labors of other people (taxes) for some 40 years now. The current numbers, however, don’t even approach the banner year of 1984, when there were 364 abortions per 1,000 live births. Just think of the savings since then. In 1970, there were only 52 cost-saving abortions per 1,000 live births, hardly worth thinking about. The dear little expendable fetuses might just as well have lived for all the good their demise would have done the government.
Abortions since 1973 number about 50 million or so, give or take a few thousand fetuses here or there but there’s more to it, as Lucke certainly knows with respect to savings. Just those abortions amount to a great deal but then the procedures have been in place for two generations, meaning that those aborted in the first 20 years would have been having their own families now at about the average U.S. rate of 2.1 children per family. So, add a huge mostly poverty-stricken- single-moms-and-babies percentage of another 40 million or so and…well, the savings have simply been astronomical.
The president may be emulating China in attempting to determine the proper family-size, albeit in a more sanguine way, i.e., not by throwing couples in jail for having more than one child. He’s attempting to give the taxpayers that option through mandated contraception – brilliant, as Lucke would probably agree. Deficit-reduction would be a cakewalk if he could do this, thereby disarming those mean-spirited republicans who are not in either his intellectual or morality league.
This is vintage Lucke regarding employer plans: “Because only women use prescription contraceptives [the vaccine], denying this coverage is gender discrimination.” Since men do not use prescription contraceptives but are forced to pay for the women’s use of same (insurance premiums or taxes), that sort of seems like gender-discrimination, too, but who’s counting?
As in the case of most liberal editorial-writers, Lucke misses the actual point, to wit, that any freedom, whether religious or otherwise and which does not harm another citizen, that is taken from a citizen is done in violation of the Constitution. A woman’s right to privacy was the big argument in Roe/Wade, but how does that play out with regard to the privacy of others? Abortion involved the physical aspect (freedom of privacy); however, mandates directly contravening doctrinal beliefs that have no adverse impact on others involves freedom of religion. This is more than dollars and cents, but editorial-writers may not have noticed.
Mandating healthcare gave the government direct control over the citizen’s right to life, let alone liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Mandating contraception-acquisition is in the same league. This is meddling with citizen freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution, but that is precisely the agenda of Obama and the left, people like Lucke – getting rid of the Constitution as a governing document because it militates against centralized, federal control of every facet of a citizen’s existence.
It has been obvious from the beginning of his presidency that Obama intends to destroy Constitutional government, the thing that has made this country the envy of the world. The elections this year for both the presidency and the Congress will comprise a watershed development. Four more years to destroy the American way of life is unthinkable.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Obama & Constitutional Law
The worrisome thing about President Obama is that he was once a senior lecturer (accounted as a tenured professor) at the University of Chicago Law School and taught regular courses, not a full load since he was involved in other enterprises having to do with government or other activities, perhaps community-organizing. Obama referred to himself as a "constitutional law professor" during his campaign for the presidency.
That’s where the rubber hits the road. Was Obama a professor who was about as bright as a watermelon with regard to the Constitution, or did he then and does he now understand the Constitution and has decided it is too anachronistic or inconvenient to his agenda to be of any importance? Plainly, this is the case. During his campaign, he made it plain that the Constitution was remiss in that it did not allow for the proper redistribution of wealth, for instance.
Redistributing the wealth was the farthest thing from the founders’ minds. They were delivering the nation from a monarchy, which could be aptly be described as the penultimate governing agency in the matter of distributing as well as redistributing the wealth. They quite obviously meant that personal ownership – not serfdom to a king – was paramount in the new nation.
The founders were so intent upon establishing this fact that their design was to inculcate a small federal government that could not re-concentrate power to a small centralized cadre, while at the same time allowing for considerable emphasis on states’ rights, thus further diluting the power of Washington. They seemed to feel that the feds should mostly take care of foreign affairs, the currency, and provide a strong military to protect the citizens, and not much else.
A number of federal agencies have been brought on line since the 1780s, some necessary and some that ought to be deep-sixed as early as yesterday, like the Education and Energy Departments. Obama has added the new dimension called the czars in order to bypass a recognizable oligarchy in preference to un-elected or even congressionally un-investigated shadowy figures making key decisions affecting everything from oil-drilling to healthcare. The Cabinet secretaries are all in place but the czars call the shots.
Obama has circumvented the Constitution in other ways. The big deal currently is Obama’s budget. Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution: All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives… . Section 8: The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defence [sic]… .
Obama knows his “budget” is not worth the reams of paper on which it’s printed, especially since the House has already routinely passed budgets on which Senate Majority Leader Reid has not for nearly two years allowed a vote. Obama can’t inculcate a budget any more than an orangutan can, but he can blame the Senate republicans for stopping the process even though the democrats control the Senate (and controlled both legislative bodies 2009-11) and could pass a budget tomorrow. All the president can do is sign or veto, something that won’t happen before the elections in November.
The president’s most recent un-Constitutional power grab concerning the contraception issue and the churches is a First Amendment violation, to be sure, but it’s also a Tenth Amendment issue: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.” The president is not empowered by the Constitution to mandate what citizens and entities such as businesses must purchase. That is a power/privilege granted to the people.
The president can’t even make people get flu shots, much less affect far more important items. Obama, however, has directed employers and insurance companies and people, all as individual entities, to do what he says with respect to insurance and what it must cover. He’s even mandated/regulated that insurance companies provide services at no charge, meaning that the taxpayers will pick up the tab. This is an egregious violation of the Constitution, about which he’s supposed to be an expert.
Last year, the most egregious violation had to do with his slaughter of Libyans in a war he conducted by executive order when the Constitution is plain in Section I, Article 8, that only Congress can declare war, though Congress itself expanded rightly or wrongly on that provision with the War Powers Act, which Obama also monstrously violated.
On the basis of his presidency vis-à-vis the Constitution, Obama the Constitutional scholar has either proven his abject stupidity or he has an agenda which is demonstrably anti-American. Some people liked to call George Bush a cowboy but he was a piker when compared to Obama, who in the kindest terms can be classified as a bona fide loose cannon threatening American civil rights and the existence of sovereign nations.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
That’s where the rubber hits the road. Was Obama a professor who was about as bright as a watermelon with regard to the Constitution, or did he then and does he now understand the Constitution and has decided it is too anachronistic or inconvenient to his agenda to be of any importance? Plainly, this is the case. During his campaign, he made it plain that the Constitution was remiss in that it did not allow for the proper redistribution of wealth, for instance.
Redistributing the wealth was the farthest thing from the founders’ minds. They were delivering the nation from a monarchy, which could be aptly be described as the penultimate governing agency in the matter of distributing as well as redistributing the wealth. They quite obviously meant that personal ownership – not serfdom to a king – was paramount in the new nation.
The founders were so intent upon establishing this fact that their design was to inculcate a small federal government that could not re-concentrate power to a small centralized cadre, while at the same time allowing for considerable emphasis on states’ rights, thus further diluting the power of Washington. They seemed to feel that the feds should mostly take care of foreign affairs, the currency, and provide a strong military to protect the citizens, and not much else.
A number of federal agencies have been brought on line since the 1780s, some necessary and some that ought to be deep-sixed as early as yesterday, like the Education and Energy Departments. Obama has added the new dimension called the czars in order to bypass a recognizable oligarchy in preference to un-elected or even congressionally un-investigated shadowy figures making key decisions affecting everything from oil-drilling to healthcare. The Cabinet secretaries are all in place but the czars call the shots.
Obama has circumvented the Constitution in other ways. The big deal currently is Obama’s budget. Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution: All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives… . Section 8: The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defence [sic]… .
Obama knows his “budget” is not worth the reams of paper on which it’s printed, especially since the House has already routinely passed budgets on which Senate Majority Leader Reid has not for nearly two years allowed a vote. Obama can’t inculcate a budget any more than an orangutan can, but he can blame the Senate republicans for stopping the process even though the democrats control the Senate (and controlled both legislative bodies 2009-11) and could pass a budget tomorrow. All the president can do is sign or veto, something that won’t happen before the elections in November.
The president’s most recent un-Constitutional power grab concerning the contraception issue and the churches is a First Amendment violation, to be sure, but it’s also a Tenth Amendment issue: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.” The president is not empowered by the Constitution to mandate what citizens and entities such as businesses must purchase. That is a power/privilege granted to the people.
The president can’t even make people get flu shots, much less affect far more important items. Obama, however, has directed employers and insurance companies and people, all as individual entities, to do what he says with respect to insurance and what it must cover. He’s even mandated/regulated that insurance companies provide services at no charge, meaning that the taxpayers will pick up the tab. This is an egregious violation of the Constitution, about which he’s supposed to be an expert.
Last year, the most egregious violation had to do with his slaughter of Libyans in a war he conducted by executive order when the Constitution is plain in Section I, Article 8, that only Congress can declare war, though Congress itself expanded rightly or wrongly on that provision with the War Powers Act, which Obama also monstrously violated.
On the basis of his presidency vis-à-vis the Constitution, Obama the Constitutional scholar has either proven his abject stupidity or he has an agenda which is demonstrably anti-American. Some people liked to call George Bush a cowboy but he was a piker when compared to Obama, who in the kindest terms can be classified as a bona fide loose cannon threatening American civil rights and the existence of sovereign nations.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Friday, February 10, 2012
Endangered Constitution
Well…after all, what’s a president to do when a recalcitrant Congress thwarts his will at every point? On 06 February in an “interview” with NBC’s morning guru Matt Lauer, President Obama displayed dismay that he couldn’t force the Congress to do his bidding and blamed the Constitution for making that his problem. He specifically blamed the “fathers” who wrote it but claimed that he was getting better as he proceeds in his presidency. Getting better at what? Getting better at satisfying his base, of course, Lauer already having mentioned that the people who voted for him in 2008 were disappointed!
The president thumbed his nose big-time at the Constitution when he instituted his personal – purely personal – war against Libya in March 2011, an action that has resulted in massive bloodshed as well as a devastated, ungoverned country. Not to be bothered by a possibly disagreeable Congress was paramount in his considerations, especially since both Defense Chief Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mullen had publicly stated he was making a mistake.
They made those statements in a congressional hearing, providing even more reason not to go to Congress. Only Congress has the power to either by declaration or a timely proviso (War Powers Act) make war. His action was all the more heinous in that Libya was no threat whatsoever to this or any other country. Now, he faces the dilemma with “what to do” about Syria, a situation exactly like that of Libya, as if he can do anything other than command decent GIs to bomb innocent women and children, as they were commanded to do regarding Libya.
Lately, Obama has decided to tell the churches/denominations what they can and cannot do, wiggling every which way to make his un-Constitutional approach work. Plainly, he hates the U.S. Constitution because it stands in the way of turning this nation upside down economically, morally, and spiritually. By regulations no one has ever conceived, his czars are turning his healthcare legislation into a nightmare of bad consequences, obviously more intentional than not.
Not even during the Great Depression of the 1930s, when communists and socialists had their strong legal parties and tried to gain control of government, was the threat to personal freedom as pronounced as it is now. Proud, suffering Americans would have none of their poison then, when there were no “safety nets,” but under Obama and a Congress insipid beyond words, the nation is heading for “herd control.” Disgusting!
The Constitution Wins
He said the Constitution was a drag
And emphasized states-rights far, far too much,
When speaking of it, he sometimes would gag,
Dismissing it as too far out of touch;
He said it gave the Congress too much power
That limited executive fiat,
His thoughts about that daily grew more sour,
He felt constrained by every tittle, jot.
He campaigned toward the document’s demise
And felt that wealth should be distributed
By him because, of course, he was so wise
And voter’s thinking so inhibited;
The Constitution did not stand for that…
The founders felt that sloth would soon ensue
If those who worked and earned should give up that
For which they toiled…and soon be slothful, too.
He seems to favor courts to legislate,
The courts with nominees by him, of course,
Since with a pen-stroke judges can relate
To any group what it must do, enforce;
He thought the Constitution was unwise
In that it gave religion too much say,
Since he decided faith was his surmise
And that believers should just…well, obey.
He felt he could declare war when he chose,
Ignoring Congress as just too, too slow,
With teleprompters he could be verbose,
Inviting all the world to his war-show;
The Constitution does not give him leave
To undertake a war just on a whim
Or even if the Congress might believe,
Debate a declaration backing him.
His healthcare bill was fashioned on a theme
That bureaucrats decide when one is sick
And then decide for him a proper scheme
To heal him or let nature interdict;
And though the Constitution disallows
The government to mandate purchases,
His healthcare clearly disavows
That fact as arcane, simple silliness.
So…now his promised change is recognized –
Subversion of the founders’ wise edict…
He would be king, with Congress paralyzed,
No fortitude his scheme to just evict;
But citizens will not for long be conned,
This country’s way of life too precious…yes,
From office they can mandate he abscond,
The Constitution wins…he will confess.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
The president thumbed his nose big-time at the Constitution when he instituted his personal – purely personal – war against Libya in March 2011, an action that has resulted in massive bloodshed as well as a devastated, ungoverned country. Not to be bothered by a possibly disagreeable Congress was paramount in his considerations, especially since both Defense Chief Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mullen had publicly stated he was making a mistake.
They made those statements in a congressional hearing, providing even more reason not to go to Congress. Only Congress has the power to either by declaration or a timely proviso (War Powers Act) make war. His action was all the more heinous in that Libya was no threat whatsoever to this or any other country. Now, he faces the dilemma with “what to do” about Syria, a situation exactly like that of Libya, as if he can do anything other than command decent GIs to bomb innocent women and children, as they were commanded to do regarding Libya.
Lately, Obama has decided to tell the churches/denominations what they can and cannot do, wiggling every which way to make his un-Constitutional approach work. Plainly, he hates the U.S. Constitution because it stands in the way of turning this nation upside down economically, morally, and spiritually. By regulations no one has ever conceived, his czars are turning his healthcare legislation into a nightmare of bad consequences, obviously more intentional than not.
Not even during the Great Depression of the 1930s, when communists and socialists had their strong legal parties and tried to gain control of government, was the threat to personal freedom as pronounced as it is now. Proud, suffering Americans would have none of their poison then, when there were no “safety nets,” but under Obama and a Congress insipid beyond words, the nation is heading for “herd control.” Disgusting!
The Constitution Wins
He said the Constitution was a drag
And emphasized states-rights far, far too much,
When speaking of it, he sometimes would gag,
Dismissing it as too far out of touch;
He said it gave the Congress too much power
That limited executive fiat,
His thoughts about that daily grew more sour,
He felt constrained by every tittle, jot.
He campaigned toward the document’s demise
And felt that wealth should be distributed
By him because, of course, he was so wise
And voter’s thinking so inhibited;
The Constitution did not stand for that…
The founders felt that sloth would soon ensue
If those who worked and earned should give up that
For which they toiled…and soon be slothful, too.
He seems to favor courts to legislate,
The courts with nominees by him, of course,
Since with a pen-stroke judges can relate
To any group what it must do, enforce;
He thought the Constitution was unwise
In that it gave religion too much say,
Since he decided faith was his surmise
And that believers should just…well, obey.
He felt he could declare war when he chose,
Ignoring Congress as just too, too slow,
With teleprompters he could be verbose,
Inviting all the world to his war-show;
The Constitution does not give him leave
To undertake a war just on a whim
Or even if the Congress might believe,
Debate a declaration backing him.
His healthcare bill was fashioned on a theme
That bureaucrats decide when one is sick
And then decide for him a proper scheme
To heal him or let nature interdict;
And though the Constitution disallows
The government to mandate purchases,
His healthcare clearly disavows
That fact as arcane, simple silliness.
So…now his promised change is recognized –
Subversion of the founders’ wise edict…
He would be king, with Congress paralyzed,
No fortitude his scheme to just evict;
But citizens will not for long be conned,
This country’s way of life too precious…yes,
From office they can mandate he abscond,
The Constitution wins…he will confess.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Thursday, February 09, 2012
Lexington Downtown - OKAY
The drumbeat goes on in Lexington by the movers and shakers who seem to be determined to change the downtown from what it is, essentially a repository for financial institutions, offices, entertainment venues, specialty shops, restaurants/bars, apartment/condominium buildings, and government facilities, along with the necessary parking garages. The objective: turn the downtown into a sort of fun-and-games tourist/convention attraction, complete with parks and anything else someone in the university classifies as aesthetic and therefore uplifting.
The attempt has been somewhat derailed by the uprising of some important folks, like UK President Capiluto, who insists that there are more pressing needs for taxpayer money such as the upgrading of the UK campus. The aesthetic-promoting cadre has concluded that some of Rupp Arena’s walls should be converted from solid building material to glass, never mind that the building is just fine as it is. One can only guess at the expense of keeping all those windows clean, the better not to offend visiting sports fans. This is just an example of the wackiness involved in the whole process.
The artists’ renderings of the new plans, including all sorts of new buildings, indicate that Vine Street will be closed from its intersection with Main to Broadway…in other words, the most important section of the street. This means, of course, that the plan requires that the downtown one-way streets must be converted to two-way, the better to enhance beauty, convenience, aesthetics, and, of course, turn the whole area into a gigantic gridlock, with left-turn lanes on a street that was clogged in the 1930s-50s an impossibility. When the attempt to close Vine was made a few years ago (and actually approved in one reading of the ordinance), the citizens would have none of it and screamed “No Way” so loudly that the commissioners’ ears were ringing for a week.
Figures in the hundreds of millions for financing the project(s) have been thrown around as if the money will just magically appear. No one has the foggiest notion of what the cost will be or how it will be defrayed. Two things are certain: (1) People interested in profits are the prime movers, not the citizenry, most of which avoids the area for obvious reasons; (2) Somewhere along the line the government will be tabbed for a huge slug of money. The new KFC Yum Center in Louisville, a sort of house that Pitino (or at least UL basketball) built is facing financial difficulties already. Sooner or later, Louisville taxpayers will get involved but not by choice.
There’s always been a mystery as to why businesspeople and/or firms shell out their own cash for building the malls and other retail areas/businesses, as well as manufacturing facilities, while somehow the citizens are supposed to cough up the funds to prop up anything that happens downtown. The reason people aren’t attracted to downtown is quite simple: the paucity of retail space coupled with the fact that parking is either impossible or too inconvenient to abide. Feeding parking meters is also a non-starter.
Imagine an actual full-sized grocery store anywhere downtown, for instance. Managing carts up and down the garage elevators is laughable on its face. This is not the 1930s-40s, when the population of Lexington was about 75,000, a fourth of what it is now. Even then, there were neighborhood groceries as was the case in even much smaller towns. I grew up in Danville then, when this was the case…two or three sizeable groceries in the business area, along with stores like Montgomery-Ward, and small groceries throughout the town. Now, the largest groceries in Danville are far from downtown, notwithstanding a population of only about 16,000. People go where they can park their cars conveniently and not line up and traverse multi-ramps in garages.
Lexington’s movers and shakers take bus trips to other cities routinely and return with glowing accounts of “how those people are so far ahead of us.” Balderdash! Lexington does not have a riverfront like Louisville or Newport or Minneapolis or a lake-front like Chicago, where a recreational/entertainment area is possible. It’s a locked-in city, quite attractive in its own way and also accommodates venues such as the Opera House, Kentucky Theater, Singletary center, Rupp Arena (among the finest in the country and newly refurbished), and the city-renovated and operated Lyric Theater, costing a cool $6 million to refurbish and $600,000 a year to operate. With the handful of one-way streets in use now, access to these facilities is a piece of cake.
The plan seems to be to completely isolate Rupp Arena from that to which it is attached now and apparently build other buildings on what is now Vine Street. Why? The center of downtown is a huge square-block cow pasture now (okay, paddock in horse country), with no actual hope for putting anything there in the near future. If the movers and shakers feel somehow compelled to just do something, why not attempt it on that perfectly located plot…but not with taxpayer money? There’s room for every kind of frill imaginable there…for the convention-goers, of course. Egad! The economy is in the tank, the city is broke, and the dreamers contemplate costly frills.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
The attempt has been somewhat derailed by the uprising of some important folks, like UK President Capiluto, who insists that there are more pressing needs for taxpayer money such as the upgrading of the UK campus. The aesthetic-promoting cadre has concluded that some of Rupp Arena’s walls should be converted from solid building material to glass, never mind that the building is just fine as it is. One can only guess at the expense of keeping all those windows clean, the better not to offend visiting sports fans. This is just an example of the wackiness involved in the whole process.
The artists’ renderings of the new plans, including all sorts of new buildings, indicate that Vine Street will be closed from its intersection with Main to Broadway…in other words, the most important section of the street. This means, of course, that the plan requires that the downtown one-way streets must be converted to two-way, the better to enhance beauty, convenience, aesthetics, and, of course, turn the whole area into a gigantic gridlock, with left-turn lanes on a street that was clogged in the 1930s-50s an impossibility. When the attempt to close Vine was made a few years ago (and actually approved in one reading of the ordinance), the citizens would have none of it and screamed “No Way” so loudly that the commissioners’ ears were ringing for a week.
Figures in the hundreds of millions for financing the project(s) have been thrown around as if the money will just magically appear. No one has the foggiest notion of what the cost will be or how it will be defrayed. Two things are certain: (1) People interested in profits are the prime movers, not the citizenry, most of which avoids the area for obvious reasons; (2) Somewhere along the line the government will be tabbed for a huge slug of money. The new KFC Yum Center in Louisville, a sort of house that Pitino (or at least UL basketball) built is facing financial difficulties already. Sooner or later, Louisville taxpayers will get involved but not by choice.
There’s always been a mystery as to why businesspeople and/or firms shell out their own cash for building the malls and other retail areas/businesses, as well as manufacturing facilities, while somehow the citizens are supposed to cough up the funds to prop up anything that happens downtown. The reason people aren’t attracted to downtown is quite simple: the paucity of retail space coupled with the fact that parking is either impossible or too inconvenient to abide. Feeding parking meters is also a non-starter.
Imagine an actual full-sized grocery store anywhere downtown, for instance. Managing carts up and down the garage elevators is laughable on its face. This is not the 1930s-40s, when the population of Lexington was about 75,000, a fourth of what it is now. Even then, there were neighborhood groceries as was the case in even much smaller towns. I grew up in Danville then, when this was the case…two or three sizeable groceries in the business area, along with stores like Montgomery-Ward, and small groceries throughout the town. Now, the largest groceries in Danville are far from downtown, notwithstanding a population of only about 16,000. People go where they can park their cars conveniently and not line up and traverse multi-ramps in garages.
Lexington’s movers and shakers take bus trips to other cities routinely and return with glowing accounts of “how those people are so far ahead of us.” Balderdash! Lexington does not have a riverfront like Louisville or Newport or Minneapolis or a lake-front like Chicago, where a recreational/entertainment area is possible. It’s a locked-in city, quite attractive in its own way and also accommodates venues such as the Opera House, Kentucky Theater, Singletary center, Rupp Arena (among the finest in the country and newly refurbished), and the city-renovated and operated Lyric Theater, costing a cool $6 million to refurbish and $600,000 a year to operate. With the handful of one-way streets in use now, access to these facilities is a piece of cake.
The plan seems to be to completely isolate Rupp Arena from that to which it is attached now and apparently build other buildings on what is now Vine Street. Why? The center of downtown is a huge square-block cow pasture now (okay, paddock in horse country), with no actual hope for putting anything there in the near future. If the movers and shakers feel somehow compelled to just do something, why not attempt it on that perfectly located plot…but not with taxpayer money? There’s room for every kind of frill imaginable there…for the convention-goers, of course. Egad! The economy is in the tank, the city is broke, and the dreamers contemplate costly frills.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Tuesday, February 07, 2012
Obama's Middle East Incredibility
What a difference three years in a presidency can make! President Obama was very vocal last year in his approval of the so-called “Arab Spring,” giving about as much aid and comfort – actually just hot air – to the insurgents as possible in places like Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen. The fact that there’s been little but violence in those countries since the events of last year, along with no recognizable governments except perhaps in Yemen, is a good indicator that the spring was not all that great.
The problem is enhanced when taking into account the fact that the worst of the Islamic terrorist groups, not to mention al Qaeda cells, are propelling themselves into governmental leadership roles. For instance, it appears that the Muslim Brotherhood will wind up running Egypt when the army finally relinquishes control. Mubarak may have been a greedy tyrant (aren’t they all?) but he was a U.S. ally and formed a critical protection of Israel. Now, the entire region is in an uproar and Israel is even more constantly under the gun.
This remarks a lesson not learned by president Obama. This is from the BBC of 19 June 2009: “Mr Obama said he believed Iranian voices should be heard, although he added that he did not want to be seen to be ‘meddling.’” This was during the uprising in Iran when the Iranian government was furnishing weapons to kill American GIs in Iraq and no telling what other kinds of “help” to the Iraqi insurgents and/or al Qaeda cutthroats.
The Iranian government was killing its people in the streets or trucking off protesters to prison for no telling what tortures and beheadings. The “people” in Iran, just as the “people” in Egypt, were attempting to change the government. It was the Iranian version of the “Arab spring” although the Iranis make no claim to being Arabs. The president might have at least awarded some hot air to the Iranis but he didn’t want to “meddle.” Now, the Iranian government has promised to bring turmoil to the nth degree to the Middle East, including with nuclear weapons.
Fast forward to March 2011. For actual reasons no one has yet figured out, President Obama decided to waste Libya, bypassed Congress and by executive order declared war on that benighted nation, dragging in NATO after the worst damage had been accomplished in the first ten days. It then took seven long months and over a billion U.S. dollars to completely wreck the country and bring about the killing of probably thousands – nobody knows the actual numbers, but American/NATO missiles were falling in Libyan neighborhoods, as well documented in the media.
Fast forward to the present. In the daily media, a bedraggled State Secretary Clinton is traveling the world damning Syrian president Assad for doing what all the other tyrants routinely do (Saddam offed 400,000 citizens), kill protesters in the streets. Early last year, she was talking about Assad as a “reformer,” certainly nothing like the horrific Qaddafi, Libya’s strongman. She indicated that members of Congress who had visited Assad considered him a “reformer,” ergo, leave him alone. One remembers the famous visits of Pelosi and Kerry, for instance, who might have furnished that incredibly wrong information.
Now, there are scenes shown on TV daily of Syrians calling for help as thousands are being wasted by Assad, not surprising since his father before him killed them like dogs in the street. Some say up to 25,000 or so and the uprising that precipitated the whole mess was conducted by the…yep…Muslim Brotherhood. The president’s credibility, and Clinton’s, stand at exactly zilch. They stamp their feet and send UN Ambassador Rice to stamp hers at the UN…for what? Obama established his bona fides as commander-in-chief by devastating Libya, population 2 million less than that of New York City, so the “Arab Spring” folks believe he should devastate Syria and hand it over to who knows whom, probably the…yep…Muslim Brotherhood.
But Syria is not Libya. It has an active military strength of 295,000 boots on the ground plus an air force. Moreover, though this sounds harsh, it may be to the final good to do whatever is necessary to see that the murderous Muslim Brotherhood does not capture yet another country.
Has the president learned anything in more than three years in office about foreign affairs? His statement in 2009 alone (just months after taking office) concerning Iran actually took him out of “meddling” anywhere in the Middle East, but that’s just what he’s done, along with Clinton, who looks worn-out doing virtually nothing but roaming the world (keeps her out of Washington’s hair). Now is the time for him/her to shut up and leave the Middle Easterners to their perpetual bloodbaths. The two misguided officials are an embarrassment and should not be in public un-chaperoned.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
The problem is enhanced when taking into account the fact that the worst of the Islamic terrorist groups, not to mention al Qaeda cells, are propelling themselves into governmental leadership roles. For instance, it appears that the Muslim Brotherhood will wind up running Egypt when the army finally relinquishes control. Mubarak may have been a greedy tyrant (aren’t they all?) but he was a U.S. ally and formed a critical protection of Israel. Now, the entire region is in an uproar and Israel is even more constantly under the gun.
This remarks a lesson not learned by president Obama. This is from the BBC of 19 June 2009: “Mr Obama said he believed Iranian voices should be heard, although he added that he did not want to be seen to be ‘meddling.’” This was during the uprising in Iran when the Iranian government was furnishing weapons to kill American GIs in Iraq and no telling what other kinds of “help” to the Iraqi insurgents and/or al Qaeda cutthroats.
The Iranian government was killing its people in the streets or trucking off protesters to prison for no telling what tortures and beheadings. The “people” in Iran, just as the “people” in Egypt, were attempting to change the government. It was the Iranian version of the “Arab spring” although the Iranis make no claim to being Arabs. The president might have at least awarded some hot air to the Iranis but he didn’t want to “meddle.” Now, the Iranian government has promised to bring turmoil to the nth degree to the Middle East, including with nuclear weapons.
Fast forward to March 2011. For actual reasons no one has yet figured out, President Obama decided to waste Libya, bypassed Congress and by executive order declared war on that benighted nation, dragging in NATO after the worst damage had been accomplished in the first ten days. It then took seven long months and over a billion U.S. dollars to completely wreck the country and bring about the killing of probably thousands – nobody knows the actual numbers, but American/NATO missiles were falling in Libyan neighborhoods, as well documented in the media.
Fast forward to the present. In the daily media, a bedraggled State Secretary Clinton is traveling the world damning Syrian president Assad for doing what all the other tyrants routinely do (Saddam offed 400,000 citizens), kill protesters in the streets. Early last year, she was talking about Assad as a “reformer,” certainly nothing like the horrific Qaddafi, Libya’s strongman. She indicated that members of Congress who had visited Assad considered him a “reformer,” ergo, leave him alone. One remembers the famous visits of Pelosi and Kerry, for instance, who might have furnished that incredibly wrong information.
Now, there are scenes shown on TV daily of Syrians calling for help as thousands are being wasted by Assad, not surprising since his father before him killed them like dogs in the street. Some say up to 25,000 or so and the uprising that precipitated the whole mess was conducted by the…yep…Muslim Brotherhood. The president’s credibility, and Clinton’s, stand at exactly zilch. They stamp their feet and send UN Ambassador Rice to stamp hers at the UN…for what? Obama established his bona fides as commander-in-chief by devastating Libya, population 2 million less than that of New York City, so the “Arab Spring” folks believe he should devastate Syria and hand it over to who knows whom, probably the…yep…Muslim Brotherhood.
But Syria is not Libya. It has an active military strength of 295,000 boots on the ground plus an air force. Moreover, though this sounds harsh, it may be to the final good to do whatever is necessary to see that the murderous Muslim Brotherhood does not capture yet another country.
Has the president learned anything in more than three years in office about foreign affairs? His statement in 2009 alone (just months after taking office) concerning Iran actually took him out of “meddling” anywhere in the Middle East, but that’s just what he’s done, along with Clinton, who looks worn-out doing virtually nothing but roaming the world (keeps her out of Washington’s hair). Now is the time for him/her to shut up and leave the Middle Easterners to their perpetual bloodbaths. The two misguided officials are an embarrassment and should not be in public un-chaperoned.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Friday, February 03, 2012
Campaign Silliness -- Nth Degree
The quadrennial circus known as a presidential election-year has taken on new meaning this cycle insofar as triviality has been served. The nation has fallen to such depths economically and morally that it seems ungovernable anyway. The republican campaigns have dissolved into catfights and mean-spiritedness, while the president has dipped to a new low of using the annual prayer breakfast for political campaigning of his own.
One looks at all of this and wonders why the most accomplished politicians – in the best sense of that term – never seem to make the scene. In 2008, the democrats put on a show among their candidates that was capped by something as creepy as appearing in some sort of debate before the homosexual community. The following appeared in this space in August 2007:
Aquarius Candidates & the Protected Class
In popular culture, the expression "Age of Aquarius" usually refers to the heyday of the hippie and New Age "movement" of the 1960s and 1970s. Perhaps this is the reason that national politics and governance are as wacky as they are today with respect to both the Democrats and the Republicans, but more especially with the democrats. The folks in the drivers' seats now are those, such as the Clintons or somebody like Congressman Kucinich, who came of age politically during that era.
Never has serious business been as trivialized as it has been lately with the "sound-bite" debates, which are anything but debates, though the Democrats seem hell-bent on being the most profound trivia-freaks. The TV-debate the other evening staged before an audience of homosexuals, lesbians, bisexuals, trans-genders, or perhaps just those with no clue as to what they are was instructive. It followed on the heels of a similar debate staged at Soldier Field in Chicago before union-members, where Senator Clinton offered the most sagacious utterance when she told the assemblage that she was "their girl." Their GIRL! Egad!
The debate before the HBLT [actually LBGT?] gang was moderated by Melissa Etheridge (okay just a panelist, along with two others), a high-profile lesbian, naturally, and sponsored by MSNBC, naturally, the news network that masquerades as a propaganda outlet for the Democrat Party. Instead of standing behind lecterns or sitting at desks, the candidates were seated in stuffed, easy-chairs, no doubt the better to display the laid-back, in-your-face approach of the homosexual, bisexual, transgender communities. One expected a wigged and gaudily attired transvestite to take the stage (Los Angeles instead of San Francisco, strangely) and writhe through an appropriate performance (a la "gay" parade histrionics) at any moment during the clambake.
The affair was sponsored by something called the Human Rights Campaign, self-described as "America’s largest civil rights organization working to achieve gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender equality." In other words, the HRC considers its constituents as a victim-class needing special protection – a sort of endangered species, like the famous snail-darter of President Carter's day. These folks are so special in the minds of the Democrat Party that a unique "debate" had to be scheduled just to assure them that the big, bad republicans would be thrown out of office and thus no longer threaten their circumstances and peace of mind. Significantly, the republican candidates have also been offered the opportunity by HRC to "debate" before this assemblage, but took a pass. Now, that would have been entertaining, indeed, since truth might have attacked the gathering and turned the thing upside-down.
Also significantly, senators Biden and Dodd, democrat president-wannabes, couldn't make the scene, leaving the "solicitous six" [including Obama] to hog the whole show. In other words, they didn't get "sucked-in" to this obvious and cynical pander. The members of the audience were interested in "domestic partner" benefits, a euphemism for cadging from all levels of government the goodies that are lawfully and legally allowed those with enough sense of commitment to form and sustain families. The recent amendments to a myriad of state constitutions establishing marriage as the act necessary to effect the appropriate benefits has placed the homosexual community on notice that the "partners," whether stay-at-home or in the workplace, are responsible for their own affairs. This shouldn't be a hardship, anyway, since taking care of families requires infinitely more of everything, including finances, than just affording "shack-up" facilities.
Former senator Edwards, from the get-go of his campaign begun in a New Orleans backyard (instead of his home-state) last December, has pledged to make homosexuals acceptable in the military, thus doing away with the "don't ask, don't tell" policy former president Clinton was stuck with in 1993, when he tried the same thing. It won't work this time, either, and Edwards knows that. The other candidates have to fall in line, whether they like it or not, but the republicans – at least as a whole – will not promise that, if for no better reason the protection of the homosexuals themselves. [Obama now thinks it’s okay for two men to marry each other. What a phony!]
Perhaps the penultimate act of lunacy was committed by prez-wannabe Gravel when he said the other day in New Hampshire that homosexuals make the best soldiers because they understand – GET THIS – real love. Gravel is the only democrat candidate who has had military service (Dodd did six years in the Army Reserve during part of which time he attended law school) and either has to be a total nutcase or at least battling at the bulwarks of insanity. He's also the guy who helped in the divulging of government secrets (Pentagon Papers) when he was in the Senate. Gravel even hinted at the relationship in the foxhole by two soldiers who "love" each other. Disgusting!
At least Hillary didn't, as she had before the unionists, claim that she was the homosexual/lesbians/bisexuals/trans-gender's GIRL, though it might have been a barn-burner performance if she had just said she was their "SIGNIFICANT OTHER," and then jumped out of her recliner and into the arms of Miss Etheridge. What theater!
So…there you have it! One longs for the day before the primaries, when the nomination was determined at the conventions and the speeches meant something. Now, the name of the game is fund-raising, performing before the cameras (misnamed debates), and shoveling manure. Disgusting!
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
One looks at all of this and wonders why the most accomplished politicians – in the best sense of that term – never seem to make the scene. In 2008, the democrats put on a show among their candidates that was capped by something as creepy as appearing in some sort of debate before the homosexual community. The following appeared in this space in August 2007:
Aquarius Candidates & the Protected Class
In popular culture, the expression "Age of Aquarius" usually refers to the heyday of the hippie and New Age "movement" of the 1960s and 1970s. Perhaps this is the reason that national politics and governance are as wacky as they are today with respect to both the Democrats and the Republicans, but more especially with the democrats. The folks in the drivers' seats now are those, such as the Clintons or somebody like Congressman Kucinich, who came of age politically during that era.
Never has serious business been as trivialized as it has been lately with the "sound-bite" debates, which are anything but debates, though the Democrats seem hell-bent on being the most profound trivia-freaks. The TV-debate the other evening staged before an audience of homosexuals, lesbians, bisexuals, trans-genders, or perhaps just those with no clue as to what they are was instructive. It followed on the heels of a similar debate staged at Soldier Field in Chicago before union-members, where Senator Clinton offered the most sagacious utterance when she told the assemblage that she was "their girl." Their GIRL! Egad!
The debate before the HBLT [actually LBGT?] gang was moderated by Melissa Etheridge (okay just a panelist, along with two others), a high-profile lesbian, naturally, and sponsored by MSNBC, naturally, the news network that masquerades as a propaganda outlet for the Democrat Party. Instead of standing behind lecterns or sitting at desks, the candidates were seated in stuffed, easy-chairs, no doubt the better to display the laid-back, in-your-face approach of the homosexual, bisexual, transgender communities. One expected a wigged and gaudily attired transvestite to take the stage (Los Angeles instead of San Francisco, strangely) and writhe through an appropriate performance (a la "gay" parade histrionics) at any moment during the clambake.
The affair was sponsored by something called the Human Rights Campaign, self-described as "America’s largest civil rights organization working to achieve gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender equality." In other words, the HRC considers its constituents as a victim-class needing special protection – a sort of endangered species, like the famous snail-darter of President Carter's day. These folks are so special in the minds of the Democrat Party that a unique "debate" had to be scheduled just to assure them that the big, bad republicans would be thrown out of office and thus no longer threaten their circumstances and peace of mind. Significantly, the republican candidates have also been offered the opportunity by HRC to "debate" before this assemblage, but took a pass. Now, that would have been entertaining, indeed, since truth might have attacked the gathering and turned the thing upside-down.
Also significantly, senators Biden and Dodd, democrat president-wannabes, couldn't make the scene, leaving the "solicitous six" [including Obama] to hog the whole show. In other words, they didn't get "sucked-in" to this obvious and cynical pander. The members of the audience were interested in "domestic partner" benefits, a euphemism for cadging from all levels of government the goodies that are lawfully and legally allowed those with enough sense of commitment to form and sustain families. The recent amendments to a myriad of state constitutions establishing marriage as the act necessary to effect the appropriate benefits has placed the homosexual community on notice that the "partners," whether stay-at-home or in the workplace, are responsible for their own affairs. This shouldn't be a hardship, anyway, since taking care of families requires infinitely more of everything, including finances, than just affording "shack-up" facilities.
Former senator Edwards, from the get-go of his campaign begun in a New Orleans backyard (instead of his home-state) last December, has pledged to make homosexuals acceptable in the military, thus doing away with the "don't ask, don't tell" policy former president Clinton was stuck with in 1993, when he tried the same thing. It won't work this time, either, and Edwards knows that. The other candidates have to fall in line, whether they like it or not, but the republicans – at least as a whole – will not promise that, if for no better reason the protection of the homosexuals themselves. [Obama now thinks it’s okay for two men to marry each other. What a phony!]
Perhaps the penultimate act of lunacy was committed by prez-wannabe Gravel when he said the other day in New Hampshire that homosexuals make the best soldiers because they understand – GET THIS – real love. Gravel is the only democrat candidate who has had military service (Dodd did six years in the Army Reserve during part of which time he attended law school) and either has to be a total nutcase or at least battling at the bulwarks of insanity. He's also the guy who helped in the divulging of government secrets (Pentagon Papers) when he was in the Senate. Gravel even hinted at the relationship in the foxhole by two soldiers who "love" each other. Disgusting!
At least Hillary didn't, as she had before the unionists, claim that she was the homosexual/lesbians/bisexuals/trans-gender's GIRL, though it might have been a barn-burner performance if she had just said she was their "SIGNIFICANT OTHER," and then jumped out of her recliner and into the arms of Miss Etheridge. What theater!
So…there you have it! One longs for the day before the primaries, when the nomination was determined at the conventions and the speeches meant something. Now, the name of the game is fund-raising, performing before the cameras (misnamed debates), and shoveling manure. Disgusting!
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Rape in the Military
The government is its own worst enemy in the matter of first discovering the answer to a problem and, secondly, doing anything about it. This is not to mention that the government is front and center in making the problem, in the first place.
Defense Secretary Panetta was all over television the other day decrying the sad fact that there are so many rapes in the military, presumably reported by women, such fact being the key to solving the problem. The media is full of the subject and has remarked about the problem at the service academies. There were 3,191 and 3,158 sexual assaults reported, respectively, in 2011 and 2010. This seems to be sort of in line with previous years, even more reported for instance in 2009 (3,230). Panetta said “officials” claim that the current number of sexual assaults is about 19,000 (52 per day) since most go unreported. This is about one rape per 84 service-members, a bit hard to believe but so be it. One wonders, though, how anything that’s unreported is so categorically defined.
The genesis of the problem lies in the fact that political correctness insists that there’s no difference between males and females. This amazing philosophy is and has been carried out everywhere in government, from the halls of Congress through all agencies and into the White House. Since there’s no difference between the sexes, there has to be “equal opportunity” at everything and at every level in the military.
Common sense dictates that this philosophy is a bunch of baloney, but common sense and political correctness are mutually exclusive. Go into any city and take the biggest, strongest, meanest women in the local university, teach them to play football and schedule a game for them with an average high-school football team in the city. The boys would kill the ladies. There’s a difference.
That’s just a difference in physical strength and the “killer mentality.” Gender-wise, the difference between men and women is much greater and far more serious. The natural attraction – and often, exploitation – regarding the sexes is obvious to even a middle-schooler. Put the guys and gals together and expect to have problems, and not just problems perpetrated by the guys.
The government created the rape problem when the screwball Congress-people decided that men and women should be thrown together even in boot camps. The fact that this had to be changed (the Marines never even obeyed the edict), lest the fighting force be reduced to absolute minimums in the ability to wage war, has not registered yet with the elitists who clamor for some sort of “equality,” when in some areas “equality” does not exist, never has and never will.
The obvious solution to the current problem is the segregation to the nth-degree possible of men and women in the military. This is not to say women should not serve, merely to say that they should not serve alongside men in close quarters, including but not confined to combat.
Common sense dictates that the fact that they (women) have to report rapes means that they’re out of their depth physically (unable to defend themselves) and therefore are unfit for rigorous duty. This is a terribly politically incorrect statement but it’s true. If they can’t defend themselves physically, how can they be expected to defend not only their country but, more especially, their colleagues?
One-hundred-percent separation is not likely possible but it’s a lead-pipe cinch that something like 95% separation is possible. For instance, no women should serve on a naval vessel unless the entire crew is female. All-male crews have successfully defended the country for centuries, so why not try all-female crews, where, at least hopefully, there would be no natural rapes? The same is true for other military teams, though women should never be in combat for the obvious physical reasons, including on any ship.
Then, of course, there’s the “he said, she said” factor. A woman knows that all she has to do is say she’s been raped and, ipso facto, she’s been raped. In the civilian world, whether she’s told the truth or not, the name of her alleged rapist is spread all over the media, even though he hasn’t even been tried. There’s nothing fair about this but that’s the way it is. Her name, of course, is not divulged. The policy in the military is to transfer out of her unit any woman who claims she’s been raped. The possibilities connected to this allowance are obvious, ergo, reports of rape.
This isn’t to say that rapes do not happen or that they shouldn’t be prosecuted. Apparently, not many are; otherwise, there would be large-scale imprisonments and dishonorable discharges. There’s rarely a witness to a rape, hence, nothing short of DNA to use to convict, and even that’s questionable because the perpetrator can always claim consensual sex, which is hard to prove to the contrary. The answer is so obvious that it will not be entertained in this era of political correctness…simple segregation. Rules can be changed. People can’t be.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Defense Secretary Panetta was all over television the other day decrying the sad fact that there are so many rapes in the military, presumably reported by women, such fact being the key to solving the problem. The media is full of the subject and has remarked about the problem at the service academies. There were 3,191 and 3,158 sexual assaults reported, respectively, in 2011 and 2010. This seems to be sort of in line with previous years, even more reported for instance in 2009 (3,230). Panetta said “officials” claim that the current number of sexual assaults is about 19,000 (52 per day) since most go unreported. This is about one rape per 84 service-members, a bit hard to believe but so be it. One wonders, though, how anything that’s unreported is so categorically defined.
The genesis of the problem lies in the fact that political correctness insists that there’s no difference between males and females. This amazing philosophy is and has been carried out everywhere in government, from the halls of Congress through all agencies and into the White House. Since there’s no difference between the sexes, there has to be “equal opportunity” at everything and at every level in the military.
Common sense dictates that this philosophy is a bunch of baloney, but common sense and political correctness are mutually exclusive. Go into any city and take the biggest, strongest, meanest women in the local university, teach them to play football and schedule a game for them with an average high-school football team in the city. The boys would kill the ladies. There’s a difference.
That’s just a difference in physical strength and the “killer mentality.” Gender-wise, the difference between men and women is much greater and far more serious. The natural attraction – and often, exploitation – regarding the sexes is obvious to even a middle-schooler. Put the guys and gals together and expect to have problems, and not just problems perpetrated by the guys.
The government created the rape problem when the screwball Congress-people decided that men and women should be thrown together even in boot camps. The fact that this had to be changed (the Marines never even obeyed the edict), lest the fighting force be reduced to absolute minimums in the ability to wage war, has not registered yet with the elitists who clamor for some sort of “equality,” when in some areas “equality” does not exist, never has and never will.
The obvious solution to the current problem is the segregation to the nth-degree possible of men and women in the military. This is not to say women should not serve, merely to say that they should not serve alongside men in close quarters, including but not confined to combat.
Common sense dictates that the fact that they (women) have to report rapes means that they’re out of their depth physically (unable to defend themselves) and therefore are unfit for rigorous duty. This is a terribly politically incorrect statement but it’s true. If they can’t defend themselves physically, how can they be expected to defend not only their country but, more especially, their colleagues?
One-hundred-percent separation is not likely possible but it’s a lead-pipe cinch that something like 95% separation is possible. For instance, no women should serve on a naval vessel unless the entire crew is female. All-male crews have successfully defended the country for centuries, so why not try all-female crews, where, at least hopefully, there would be no natural rapes? The same is true for other military teams, though women should never be in combat for the obvious physical reasons, including on any ship.
Then, of course, there’s the “he said, she said” factor. A woman knows that all she has to do is say she’s been raped and, ipso facto, she’s been raped. In the civilian world, whether she’s told the truth or not, the name of her alleged rapist is spread all over the media, even though he hasn’t even been tried. There’s nothing fair about this but that’s the way it is. Her name, of course, is not divulged. The policy in the military is to transfer out of her unit any woman who claims she’s been raped. The possibilities connected to this allowance are obvious, ergo, reports of rape.
This isn’t to say that rapes do not happen or that they shouldn’t be prosecuted. Apparently, not many are; otherwise, there would be large-scale imprisonments and dishonorable discharges. There’s rarely a witness to a rape, hence, nothing short of DNA to use to convict, and even that’s questionable because the perpetrator can always claim consensual sex, which is hard to prove to the contrary. The answer is so obvious that it will not be entertained in this era of political correctness…simple segregation. Rules can be changed. People can’t be.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Monday, January 16, 2012
What Would MLK Say Today?
In a column of 16 January – Martin Luther King Jr. Day – Lexington Herald- Leader’s Tom Eblen remarked that if the assassinated rights-leader were in Lexington, he would make it a point to spend time at Main and Esplanade Streets with the Occupy Wall Street protesters, who are still demonstrating at that location but without camping out, of course. Eblen might also have mentioned that at one time this location was a slave-auctioning site, though, come to think of it, he probably did – a sort of veiled allusion.
There’s no argument with the annual observance plus all the streets, buildings and parks named after King, not to mention the multiplicity of statues throughout the country. He was a great man and represented/conducted a great cause – civil rights. He was one of the most important Americans of last century.
Connecting King’s cause with the Occupy cause, however, is an imagination too far. King’s cause was by way of erasing differences in the classes while the Occupiers have made it practically a religious effort to promote class warfare, with the final result being that the government will punish the producers, taking what they cobble together and re-distributing it to the non-producers, the virtual definition of socialism/communism.
The Occupiers’ main ally occupies the White House, though (with a wink and a nod) he has surrounded himself with Wall Streeters and conducts huge fund-raising rallies to cadge campaign loot from them…promising a billion-dollar effort to retain his seat. The fat cats don’t give huge sums without something in return, so the conclusion to be drawn is obvious. To his give-’em-the-spin credit (or blame), he has united the unions and the entrepreneurs, sworn enemies, in support of his incredibly flawed administration, defined from the get-go by a tax-cheat as the Treasury secretary.
The guest speaker at this year’s main event in Lexington is Marc Lamont Hill, a Columbia University professor and TV talking-head. From a telephone-interview with Hill, Eblen furnished this statement: “And the gap [between what is had and what is possible, presumably for African Americans] isn’t an intelligence gap, an effort gap, it’s an opportunity gap.” There may be no intelligence/effort gap, but there certainly is no opportunity gap. The civil-rights laws of the 1960s, not to mention even the use of National Guard troops in an effort to inculcate fairness in schools in the 1950s, were designed to guarantee against an opportunity gap, even to the point of establishing quotas.
In fact, the abuse of these laws was demonstrated by SCOTUS Justice Sotomayor, who, using ethnicity as qualifier, ruled against whites in a job-promotion case involving test-scores, and was overturned by the SCOTUS even as she was being confirmed. Hill is too smart not to recognize the gap that actually does exist, to wit, a morality gap.
This introduces another claim by Hill, namely, that America’s core problem is poverty. The largest segment of the population living in poverty is the single-mom-and-family category, especially in the black community, in which more than 70% of babies are born without fathers of record. Contrarily, in 1960 before passage of all the entitlement-legislation, about 75% of black families were headed by live-in parents. If not for an inordinate percentage of abortions in the black community, the numbers of blacks on welfare now would be astounding.
The almost indiscriminate breeding – lack of morals, to many – is responsible for poverty, with the heaviest onus borne by African-American men who do not support their children (especially not marrying their children’s “mothers”), forcing the taxpayers to do it for them. This is not hate-speech, as Eblen probably would have it, but just plain fact.
Rather than express the truth, Hill takes the Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton positions – blame whitey. This wears very thin now, after 50 or so years, though the politically correct crowd, probably including Eblen, continues to flagellate itself over something for which it was not remotely responsible – slavery. Racist operators like Hill love it and make a cottage industry out of exploiting it. Only the gullible fall for it.
To see the disconnect of people like Hill with King, one has only to look at the 30-foot statue (tall as a three-story building) of King on the National Mall, created by movers and shakers in the black community. By contrast, the statue of Lincoln is 11-feet shorter and the statue of President Franklin Roosevelt, a four-term president, is merely life-size.
The King statue was designed in China, sculpted by a Chinese artist, delivered in pieces to the Mall and assembled not by Americans, union or otherwise, but by Chinese coolies. It’s no wonder that, towering Mao-like as it does over everything else, it could be called the Great Buddha on the Mall. King is depicted as looking (glowering) down on everyone and everything…within the shadow of the Great Emancipator and the World War II memorial. It’s an “in your face” monstrosity, something King would have rejected, preferring probably something on the order of a pensive Gandhi, perhaps his most important mentor.
Only someone who is politically incorrect would call attention to Hill’s propaganda and the garish statue, but so be it.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
There’s no argument with the annual observance plus all the streets, buildings and parks named after King, not to mention the multiplicity of statues throughout the country. He was a great man and represented/conducted a great cause – civil rights. He was one of the most important Americans of last century.
Connecting King’s cause with the Occupy cause, however, is an imagination too far. King’s cause was by way of erasing differences in the classes while the Occupiers have made it practically a religious effort to promote class warfare, with the final result being that the government will punish the producers, taking what they cobble together and re-distributing it to the non-producers, the virtual definition of socialism/communism.
The Occupiers’ main ally occupies the White House, though (with a wink and a nod) he has surrounded himself with Wall Streeters and conducts huge fund-raising rallies to cadge campaign loot from them…promising a billion-dollar effort to retain his seat. The fat cats don’t give huge sums without something in return, so the conclusion to be drawn is obvious. To his give-’em-the-spin credit (or blame), he has united the unions and the entrepreneurs, sworn enemies, in support of his incredibly flawed administration, defined from the get-go by a tax-cheat as the Treasury secretary.
The guest speaker at this year’s main event in Lexington is Marc Lamont Hill, a Columbia University professor and TV talking-head. From a telephone-interview with Hill, Eblen furnished this statement: “And the gap [between what is had and what is possible, presumably for African Americans] isn’t an intelligence gap, an effort gap, it’s an opportunity gap.” There may be no intelligence/effort gap, but there certainly is no opportunity gap. The civil-rights laws of the 1960s, not to mention even the use of National Guard troops in an effort to inculcate fairness in schools in the 1950s, were designed to guarantee against an opportunity gap, even to the point of establishing quotas.
In fact, the abuse of these laws was demonstrated by SCOTUS Justice Sotomayor, who, using ethnicity as qualifier, ruled against whites in a job-promotion case involving test-scores, and was overturned by the SCOTUS even as she was being confirmed. Hill is too smart not to recognize the gap that actually does exist, to wit, a morality gap.
This introduces another claim by Hill, namely, that America’s core problem is poverty. The largest segment of the population living in poverty is the single-mom-and-family category, especially in the black community, in which more than 70% of babies are born without fathers of record. Contrarily, in 1960 before passage of all the entitlement-legislation, about 75% of black families were headed by live-in parents. If not for an inordinate percentage of abortions in the black community, the numbers of blacks on welfare now would be astounding.
The almost indiscriminate breeding – lack of morals, to many – is responsible for poverty, with the heaviest onus borne by African-American men who do not support their children (especially not marrying their children’s “mothers”), forcing the taxpayers to do it for them. This is not hate-speech, as Eblen probably would have it, but just plain fact.
Rather than express the truth, Hill takes the Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton positions – blame whitey. This wears very thin now, after 50 or so years, though the politically correct crowd, probably including Eblen, continues to flagellate itself over something for which it was not remotely responsible – slavery. Racist operators like Hill love it and make a cottage industry out of exploiting it. Only the gullible fall for it.
To see the disconnect of people like Hill with King, one has only to look at the 30-foot statue (tall as a three-story building) of King on the National Mall, created by movers and shakers in the black community. By contrast, the statue of Lincoln is 11-feet shorter and the statue of President Franklin Roosevelt, a four-term president, is merely life-size.
The King statue was designed in China, sculpted by a Chinese artist, delivered in pieces to the Mall and assembled not by Americans, union or otherwise, but by Chinese coolies. It’s no wonder that, towering Mao-like as it does over everything else, it could be called the Great Buddha on the Mall. King is depicted as looking (glowering) down on everyone and everything…within the shadow of the Great Emancipator and the World War II memorial. It’s an “in your face” monstrosity, something King would have rejected, preferring probably something on the order of a pensive Gandhi, perhaps his most important mentor.
Only someone who is politically incorrect would call attention to Hill’s propaganda and the garish statue, but so be it.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Friday, January 13, 2012
Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde, POTUS & Carney
It’s just past one a.m. in the little room off the Oval Office and Dr. Jekyll and his alter ego Mr. Hyde are meeting with President Obama and his press czar, Jay Carney, hereinafter referenced as J, H, O, and C, respectively, if not necessarily respectfully.
**O: Glad you could make it guys, you’ve always been a big help when I need…
**J: Does he never learn, Edward Hyde? We are not guys, especially to the colonists. We are sirs…okay we can be blokes here, Barry since this is so-o-o informal and…
**H: Quite so, Henry Jekyll, but I refuse to meet in this notorious room again. Either we go into the Oval Office or I – as you colonists so aptly put it – take a powder. You asked advice about the Tea Party in this room when last we met, meaning this room is profane and in deference to King George the Third, I…oh, speaking of powder, did you line up the howitzers and blow away the tea party as I might have suggested then?
**J: Easy there, Edward! He just means that the Tea Party should have been sweetened with your profound rhetoric, Barry, absolutely deep-sixed by eloquence and intellect delivered by state-of-the-art teleprompters…most likely my suggestion, though I don’t remember much except how Slick Will made this into a fun room, fit for any kind of orgy, real or imagined. (all enter the Oval Office) And these Styrofoam cups have to go, Barry…it’s fine china for tea or nothing.
**O: Jay, go rouse the kitchen crew and get some appropriate china and delicacies up here in ten minutes or less but don’t mention why…and bring me a beer.
**C: Aye aye sir, commander-in-chief, I’m on my way. (leaves)
**J: Commander-in-chief, Barry? That sounds so…well…haughty.
**O: I’ve commanded everyone to address me that way now since my hugely successful invasion of Libya and the offing of Osama. This month, navy obedience is the order of the day…or something like that…something military, in other words. I checked with the Salvation Army.
**H: Oh, I say, how quaint! Anyone gets out of line gets a good lashing at the mast…39 stripes, blood splattering all over the Congress…
**J: What Edward means is that the mark of a leader is his willingness to exact discipline and…
**H: Ah yes, Barry – Libya! What a stroke of genius and it took only seven months to put the buggers away. All those neighborhoods blown to smithereens by your bombs…blood running in the streets. I watched it every night on BBC, but, I say, Barry, I didn’t know you could invade a sovereign nation by executive order…reminds me of the glory days of Admiral Nelson.
**O: I went to the UN, Edward, or rather, I sent three ladies to work their charms on the UN and say that Qaddafi was mean and had to go and that I could ignore the Congress, the Constitution and the War Powers Act and anything else like maybe a town ordinance or something and just blow him away. (Carney returns, carrying huge tray)
**C: The kitchen crew told me where to go, Commander-in-chief, so I…
**J: Egad, Edward, all that mismatched china…and doughnuts…ugh! When will the colonists ever become civilized?
**H: I can see the papers now, Henry. Commander-in-chief has White House kitchen crew drawn and quartered – navy stuff there, Barry – for disobeying direct order, especially concerning crumpets.
**J: What Edward means, Barry, is that your justice is swift and that the kitchen crew loses a quarter’s pay – three months.
**O: Can we just get down to business. This beer is warm, Jay…ugh. And why are we here? I forgot and even JohnKerry couldn’t remember.
**C: Sorry, commander-in-chief, but the kitchen crew thought it was for our visitors – they drink it warm, you know. And I checked the teleprompter while I was gone and found that we’re here because of the Arab Spring.
**O: Okay, so my problem, gentlemen, is that there’s a threat of an American Spring coming up and…
**J: Aha! And if it goes like the Arab Spring last year, you might be on the way out…is that it, Barry?
**H: Oh…how marvelous! Blood in the streets of Washington, just like 1812 when we burned the place down…oh, hoo hah, what a show! Do you think there might be some beheadings…all those Muslims lurking here and there?
**J: What he means, Jay, is that your problem is serious since the apparatchiks also have to go when there’s a revolution.
**C: H-m-m-m.
**O: Let’s be serious here. We’ve just had Occupy Wall Street terrorists camping out in public parks and…
**H: And doing rapes and all sorts of strange things and using the police cars for bathrooms…
**J: Cool it, Edward. What Edward means, Barry, is that protests can be dangerous.
**C: You think we don’t know that, Henry? Look what commander-in-chief did in Libya to celebrate the Arab Spring…all those dead Libyans. Now we have all those students raising hell about Wall Street and…well, just about all the czars in the White House came from Wall Street. We’ve been in bunker mode, hoping the idiots wouldn’t find out.
**O: Let’s stick to the subject, Jay. Henry, what should I do about an American Spring? I can call out the troops, you know, but that seems so…well somehow fey.
**H: Oh, hahahahaha, I say bring out the Bradleys and mow ’em down on Pennsylvania Avenue.
**J: He asked me, Edward, not you. Edward just means that a show of force is sometimes necessary, Barry. He’s not suggesting you pull an Assad on them…just scare the bejesus out of them but don’t use m-16s.
**H: I say, Barry, it’s like FDR said…the only fear is fear itself or something like that. Besides, you did in the Libyans, so the only enemy you have to fear is by way of reprisal…
**J: And reprisal means the Libyans and the Libyans couldn’t beat your Girl Scouts right now, Barry, since you pulverized them although it took months, not days, as you promised. So, as you Americans say…not to worry! There will be no American Spring.
**C: In other words (starts singing), happy days are here again.
**O: Stuff it Carney and go get me a cold one.
**J: Come, Edward, I can stand the colonists for just so long…uncivilized creatures!
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
**O: Glad you could make it guys, you’ve always been a big help when I need…
**J: Does he never learn, Edward Hyde? We are not guys, especially to the colonists. We are sirs…okay we can be blokes here, Barry since this is so-o-o informal and…
**H: Quite so, Henry Jekyll, but I refuse to meet in this notorious room again. Either we go into the Oval Office or I – as you colonists so aptly put it – take a powder. You asked advice about the Tea Party in this room when last we met, meaning this room is profane and in deference to King George the Third, I…oh, speaking of powder, did you line up the howitzers and blow away the tea party as I might have suggested then?
**J: Easy there, Edward! He just means that the Tea Party should have been sweetened with your profound rhetoric, Barry, absolutely deep-sixed by eloquence and intellect delivered by state-of-the-art teleprompters…most likely my suggestion, though I don’t remember much except how Slick Will made this into a fun room, fit for any kind of orgy, real or imagined. (all enter the Oval Office) And these Styrofoam cups have to go, Barry…it’s fine china for tea or nothing.
**O: Jay, go rouse the kitchen crew and get some appropriate china and delicacies up here in ten minutes or less but don’t mention why…and bring me a beer.
**C: Aye aye sir, commander-in-chief, I’m on my way. (leaves)
**J: Commander-in-chief, Barry? That sounds so…well…haughty.
**O: I’ve commanded everyone to address me that way now since my hugely successful invasion of Libya and the offing of Osama. This month, navy obedience is the order of the day…or something like that…something military, in other words. I checked with the Salvation Army.
**H: Oh, I say, how quaint! Anyone gets out of line gets a good lashing at the mast…39 stripes, blood splattering all over the Congress…
**J: What Edward means is that the mark of a leader is his willingness to exact discipline and…
**H: Ah yes, Barry – Libya! What a stroke of genius and it took only seven months to put the buggers away. All those neighborhoods blown to smithereens by your bombs…blood running in the streets. I watched it every night on BBC, but, I say, Barry, I didn’t know you could invade a sovereign nation by executive order…reminds me of the glory days of Admiral Nelson.
**O: I went to the UN, Edward, or rather, I sent three ladies to work their charms on the UN and say that Qaddafi was mean and had to go and that I could ignore the Congress, the Constitution and the War Powers Act and anything else like maybe a town ordinance or something and just blow him away. (Carney returns, carrying huge tray)
**C: The kitchen crew told me where to go, Commander-in-chief, so I…
**J: Egad, Edward, all that mismatched china…and doughnuts…ugh! When will the colonists ever become civilized?
**H: I can see the papers now, Henry. Commander-in-chief has White House kitchen crew drawn and quartered – navy stuff there, Barry – for disobeying direct order, especially concerning crumpets.
**J: What Edward means, Barry, is that your justice is swift and that the kitchen crew loses a quarter’s pay – three months.
**O: Can we just get down to business. This beer is warm, Jay…ugh. And why are we here? I forgot and even JohnKerry couldn’t remember.
**C: Sorry, commander-in-chief, but the kitchen crew thought it was for our visitors – they drink it warm, you know. And I checked the teleprompter while I was gone and found that we’re here because of the Arab Spring.
**O: Okay, so my problem, gentlemen, is that there’s a threat of an American Spring coming up and…
**J: Aha! And if it goes like the Arab Spring last year, you might be on the way out…is that it, Barry?
**H: Oh…how marvelous! Blood in the streets of Washington, just like 1812 when we burned the place down…oh, hoo hah, what a show! Do you think there might be some beheadings…all those Muslims lurking here and there?
**J: What he means, Jay, is that your problem is serious since the apparatchiks also have to go when there’s a revolution.
**C: H-m-m-m.
**O: Let’s be serious here. We’ve just had Occupy Wall Street terrorists camping out in public parks and…
**H: And doing rapes and all sorts of strange things and using the police cars for bathrooms…
**J: Cool it, Edward. What Edward means, Barry, is that protests can be dangerous.
**C: You think we don’t know that, Henry? Look what commander-in-chief did in Libya to celebrate the Arab Spring…all those dead Libyans. Now we have all those students raising hell about Wall Street and…well, just about all the czars in the White House came from Wall Street. We’ve been in bunker mode, hoping the idiots wouldn’t find out.
**O: Let’s stick to the subject, Jay. Henry, what should I do about an American Spring? I can call out the troops, you know, but that seems so…well somehow fey.
**H: Oh, hahahahaha, I say bring out the Bradleys and mow ’em down on Pennsylvania Avenue.
**J: He asked me, Edward, not you. Edward just means that a show of force is sometimes necessary, Barry. He’s not suggesting you pull an Assad on them…just scare the bejesus out of them but don’t use m-16s.
**H: I say, Barry, it’s like FDR said…the only fear is fear itself or something like that. Besides, you did in the Libyans, so the only enemy you have to fear is by way of reprisal…
**J: And reprisal means the Libyans and the Libyans couldn’t beat your Girl Scouts right now, Barry, since you pulverized them although it took months, not days, as you promised. So, as you Americans say…not to worry! There will be no American Spring.
**C: In other words (starts singing), happy days are here again.
**O: Stuff it Carney and go get me a cold one.
**J: Come, Edward, I can stand the colonists for just so long…uncivilized creatures!
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Sunday, January 08, 2012
Brokaw, Obama & Libya
I’ve just begun reading Tom Brokaw’s latest book, The Time of Our Lives. Each chapter begins with a fact and a question followed by three sections termed the Past, Present and Promise covering such subjects as education, government and social considerations.
I was brought up short on page ten with this paragraph: “The seething of the underclass [Arab Spring?] spread to Libya, where Moammar Gadhafi responded with vicious military attacks on the insurgents that drew international condemnation and resulted in NATO military help for the Libyan rebels.” (bold face mine). Whoa! Libya was attacked via executive order almost exclusively by President Barack Hussein Obama, who announced while beginning a vacation in Brazil on 19 March that he had ordered Americans to bomb the bejesus out of Libya (military targets, but what do bombs know?).
There followed intensive bombing of Libya primarily by the United States for ten straight days at a cost of $55 million per day, after which NATO was supposed to take up the action with Obama “leading from behind,” explaining that the U.S would merely continue to “support” the effort, which he said would be over in days, not months. The effort lasted for seven months and the U.S. wound up providing the lion’s share of everything such as the ammo and logistics, not to mention actual warfare. Cost to the U.S.: $1.1 billion.
In other words, Brokaw grossly misrepresented the truth. The Libya affair was exclusively an Obama project from the get-go, for reasons apparently known only to him since Libya, population two million less than that of New York City, with a troop-strength of only 76,000, has never been a threat to the United States or NATO, which, like the Pentagon, wanted no part of the affair but, also like the Pentagon, was bullied into it. Defense Secretary Gates described Obama’s massacre as done “on the fly,” i.e. with no planning, certainly not by the Defense Department. Both he and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mullen publicly announced their opposition in a Congressional hearing before Obama did anything. The president overruled them.
Obama instigated his own attempt at genocide by executive order, completely bypassing Congress, which was not consulted. Instead, State Secretary Clinton, U.N. Ambassador Rice and White House apparatchik Samantha Power took the project to the United Nations and bullied that bunch of screwballs into approving a resolution to establish a no-fly zone (done in about four days) and the catch-all mandate, “use all means necessary short of foreign occupation to protect civilians.”
The women’s case ostensibly had to do with Qaddafi mistreating his people, an everyday occurrence in the Muslim countries throughout the Middle East. For instance, this is from Voice of America on 21 December, “The United Nations says at least 5,000 people have been killed during the nine-month uprising against the government of [Syrian president Bashar] al-Assad.” In the early 1980s, some 20,000 Syrians were killed by the government of Assad’s father, then the president. This is everyday stuff where Muslims kill each other over religious matters and deciding who will run the country! One wonders if Brokaw thinks another NATO action in Syria might be forthcoming. Perhaps he will ask Obama.
Did Brokaw drink the Kool-Aid concerning Libya? Not likely! He’s smarter than that. The logical conclusion is that he spread the propaganda provided by the White House in the willful destruction of a sovereign nation, never mind that Qaddafi was a tyrant. Most Muslim head honchos are tyrants. His misrepresenting of the Libya matter is on about the same level as that of Dan Rather, his counterpart at CBS at the time, in Rather’s monstrous lie in 2004 concerning George Bush and the Texas Air National Guard.
On page 13, Brokaw wrote this concerning Richard Nixon (or Tricky Dick, as Brokaw called him): “His oval office was a bunker stocked with illegal conspiracies and presidential high crimes and misdemeanors.” Nixon, besides never attacking another nation (Cambodian incursion in 1970 was to interdict supply routes during Vietnam War), finally did bring an end to the Vienam War. Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution requires that Congress declare war, but Obama made war against Libya without even consulting Congress. He committed a high crime or misdemeanor, and the War Powers Act was not a factor since Libya had not in any way threatened this nation.
This is the appropriate requirement of the War Powers Act of 1973 for the deployment of the military: “into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, and to the continued use of such forces in hostilities or in such situations.” The U.S. was not involved in any hostilities in Libya or anywhere near Libya when Obama ordered U.S. military action. When Congress declares war, the commander-in-chief prosecutes it, according to the Constitution. In the case of Libya, the United Nations declared war and President Obama prosecuted it. Shameful!
Brokaw, who no doubt took/takes pride in himself as an honest journalist, should have written that President Obama had committed an impeachable offense. Instead, he advanced the well-known agenda of NBC, his former employer, i.e., he provided cover for Obama. The U.S. didn’t even buy Libyan oil, but European NATO nations such as Britain and France did, so those nations had every reason not to disturb the status quo. To satisfy Obama, they spent their own resources for seven months…and for what? No one knows now who/what the government is in Libya.
Rewriting history is not attractive or honest. Brokaw should be ashamed.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
I was brought up short on page ten with this paragraph: “The seething of the underclass [Arab Spring?] spread to Libya, where Moammar Gadhafi responded with vicious military attacks on the insurgents that drew international condemnation and resulted in NATO military help for the Libyan rebels.” (bold face mine). Whoa! Libya was attacked via executive order almost exclusively by President Barack Hussein Obama, who announced while beginning a vacation in Brazil on 19 March that he had ordered Americans to bomb the bejesus out of Libya (military targets, but what do bombs know?).
There followed intensive bombing of Libya primarily by the United States for ten straight days at a cost of $55 million per day, after which NATO was supposed to take up the action with Obama “leading from behind,” explaining that the U.S would merely continue to “support” the effort, which he said would be over in days, not months. The effort lasted for seven months and the U.S. wound up providing the lion’s share of everything such as the ammo and logistics, not to mention actual warfare. Cost to the U.S.: $1.1 billion.
In other words, Brokaw grossly misrepresented the truth. The Libya affair was exclusively an Obama project from the get-go, for reasons apparently known only to him since Libya, population two million less than that of New York City, with a troop-strength of only 76,000, has never been a threat to the United States or NATO, which, like the Pentagon, wanted no part of the affair but, also like the Pentagon, was bullied into it. Defense Secretary Gates described Obama’s massacre as done “on the fly,” i.e. with no planning, certainly not by the Defense Department. Both he and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mullen publicly announced their opposition in a Congressional hearing before Obama did anything. The president overruled them.
Obama instigated his own attempt at genocide by executive order, completely bypassing Congress, which was not consulted. Instead, State Secretary Clinton, U.N. Ambassador Rice and White House apparatchik Samantha Power took the project to the United Nations and bullied that bunch of screwballs into approving a resolution to establish a no-fly zone (done in about four days) and the catch-all mandate, “use all means necessary short of foreign occupation to protect civilians.”
The women’s case ostensibly had to do with Qaddafi mistreating his people, an everyday occurrence in the Muslim countries throughout the Middle East. For instance, this is from Voice of America on 21 December, “The United Nations says at least 5,000 people have been killed during the nine-month uprising against the government of [Syrian president Bashar] al-Assad.” In the early 1980s, some 20,000 Syrians were killed by the government of Assad’s father, then the president. This is everyday stuff where Muslims kill each other over religious matters and deciding who will run the country! One wonders if Brokaw thinks another NATO action in Syria might be forthcoming. Perhaps he will ask Obama.
Did Brokaw drink the Kool-Aid concerning Libya? Not likely! He’s smarter than that. The logical conclusion is that he spread the propaganda provided by the White House in the willful destruction of a sovereign nation, never mind that Qaddafi was a tyrant. Most Muslim head honchos are tyrants. His misrepresenting of the Libya matter is on about the same level as that of Dan Rather, his counterpart at CBS at the time, in Rather’s monstrous lie in 2004 concerning George Bush and the Texas Air National Guard.
On page 13, Brokaw wrote this concerning Richard Nixon (or Tricky Dick, as Brokaw called him): “His oval office was a bunker stocked with illegal conspiracies and presidential high crimes and misdemeanors.” Nixon, besides never attacking another nation (Cambodian incursion in 1970 was to interdict supply routes during Vietnam War), finally did bring an end to the Vienam War. Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution requires that Congress declare war, but Obama made war against Libya without even consulting Congress. He committed a high crime or misdemeanor, and the War Powers Act was not a factor since Libya had not in any way threatened this nation.
This is the appropriate requirement of the War Powers Act of 1973 for the deployment of the military: “into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, and to the continued use of such forces in hostilities or in such situations.” The U.S. was not involved in any hostilities in Libya or anywhere near Libya when Obama ordered U.S. military action. When Congress declares war, the commander-in-chief prosecutes it, according to the Constitution. In the case of Libya, the United Nations declared war and President Obama prosecuted it. Shameful!
Brokaw, who no doubt took/takes pride in himself as an honest journalist, should have written that President Obama had committed an impeachable offense. Instead, he advanced the well-known agenda of NBC, his former employer, i.e., he provided cover for Obama. The U.S. didn’t even buy Libyan oil, but European NATO nations such as Britain and France did, so those nations had every reason not to disturb the status quo. To satisfy Obama, they spent their own resources for seven months…and for what? No one knows now who/what the government is in Libya.
Rewriting history is not attractive or honest. Brokaw should be ashamed.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Thursday, January 05, 2012
The Senators & Comacho
In a monstrous display of hypocrisy, the Orange Bowl (04 January) head honchos accepted and then dis-invited Camacho sponsorship. The reason: Democrat Senators Lautenberg, Blumenthal and Durbin objected to Comacho, though they made no objection about other sponsors such as Bud Lite and Corona, beer-makers, and Bacardi, rum-maker. So…they were dismayed concerning Camacho’s legal cigars (surely shocked and appalled, the usual reaction by righteous senators when attacked by do-goodism) but figured beer and rum were okay.
After all, enjoying a cigar while driving might cause a bit of smoke to emanate skyward and cause global warming to melt the ice-caps and consequently waste the polar bears and cause Manhattan to become part surf and part beach, but driving while enjoying a good beer or a half-pint of rum could only cause someone to get killed, nothing serious. The choice was easy and the senators showed their superior intelligence in exerting their influence. By the way, the choice was also easy because none of this applied to their states.
This is no brief for tobacco, a harmful substance but certainly not more harmful than alcoholic beverages in any form. Indeed, where using tobacco may be harmful to an individual, it isn’t likely to cause harm to anyone else. Contrarily, the user of alcohol, besides also hurting himself just as in the case of tobacco, risks not only the possibility of hurting others but in thousands of cases every year causes death and destruction to others, making the probability quite substantive. Compared to the cigar-smoker, the imbiber of alcohol is a devil.
Apparently, the good senators felt that the cigar-flashing would deliver the wrong message to young people, as if the young people are not already more knowledgeable about both tobacco and alcohol (and all other drugs, of which tobacco is not one) than the senators. If that was their position, they were sending the message that tobacco is bad but drinking is okay; otherwise, they would have denounced all the forms of danger. To do that and be honest, they would have had to renounce both their drinking habits (if applicable) and the liquor lobby, the latter too great a sugar-daddy to politicians to upset.
The extreme irony, of course has to do with do-gooder Senator Dick Durbin, democrat of Illinois. This advocate for the youth is most famous for his comparing of American GIs (a segment of youth of which he has no understanding) in Iraq to Stalin’s murderous keepers of the Soviet Gulags, the equally murderous Storm Troopers of the butcher Adolph Hitler, who directed the dispatching of 11 million in the 1930s-40s, and Pol Pot’s murderers of millions in the “killing fields” of Cambodia – all recent history.
But that’s not all that establishes Durbin as a paragon of virtue with respect at least to the law and conscience. This is from the Chicago Tribune of 30 December 2008: "U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D- Nevada) said in a statement this afternoon the Senate will not seat anyone Gov. Rod Blagojevich chooses to fill Illinois' vacant Senate post, amid word that the governor is set to name former Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris. The statement also is signed by U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, who has repeatedly urged Blagojevich not to name a replacement for the seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama. The statement specifically names Burris, but applies to any choice the governor might make."
This is from Reuters of 30 December 2008: "KAILUA, Hawaii (Reuters) - U.S. President-elect Barack Obama said on Tuesday he agreed that Senate Democrats 'cannot accept' any move by Illinois' scandal-tarred governor to name a replacement for Obama's Senate seat." Get the picture? Durbin joined Reid and Obama in purposefully attempting to violate the U. S. Constitution with respect to the requirements for filling a vacated Senate seat. They committed treacherous acts although they were not successful. Burris was seated and served out the term vacated by Obama. All three – Durbin, Reid, Obama – at this point were tinhorn crooks playing one of the lowest games of politics – ganging up on the perceived vulnerable.
All of this is part and parcel of why citizens hold politicians in such low esteem, including Obama, who stays below the 50% mark in approval ratings, though much of that is due to his blatant incompetence and his proclivity for using the executive to browbeat the Congresspersons and anyone else he deems worthy of his disdain. Disgusting!
Equally disgusting is the subject at hand. Three senators, either so blind to reality or so opportunistic that they can’t see beyond the bridges of their respective noses, disparage the least harmful of two substances in the name of protecting the youth while consequently approving the most harmful. So…does the above apply…or are they just dumb as gourds?
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
After all, enjoying a cigar while driving might cause a bit of smoke to emanate skyward and cause global warming to melt the ice-caps and consequently waste the polar bears and cause Manhattan to become part surf and part beach, but driving while enjoying a good beer or a half-pint of rum could only cause someone to get killed, nothing serious. The choice was easy and the senators showed their superior intelligence in exerting their influence. By the way, the choice was also easy because none of this applied to their states.
This is no brief for tobacco, a harmful substance but certainly not more harmful than alcoholic beverages in any form. Indeed, where using tobacco may be harmful to an individual, it isn’t likely to cause harm to anyone else. Contrarily, the user of alcohol, besides also hurting himself just as in the case of tobacco, risks not only the possibility of hurting others but in thousands of cases every year causes death and destruction to others, making the probability quite substantive. Compared to the cigar-smoker, the imbiber of alcohol is a devil.
Apparently, the good senators felt that the cigar-flashing would deliver the wrong message to young people, as if the young people are not already more knowledgeable about both tobacco and alcohol (and all other drugs, of which tobacco is not one) than the senators. If that was their position, they were sending the message that tobacco is bad but drinking is okay; otherwise, they would have denounced all the forms of danger. To do that and be honest, they would have had to renounce both their drinking habits (if applicable) and the liquor lobby, the latter too great a sugar-daddy to politicians to upset.
The extreme irony, of course has to do with do-gooder Senator Dick Durbin, democrat of Illinois. This advocate for the youth is most famous for his comparing of American GIs (a segment of youth of which he has no understanding) in Iraq to Stalin’s murderous keepers of the Soviet Gulags, the equally murderous Storm Troopers of the butcher Adolph Hitler, who directed the dispatching of 11 million in the 1930s-40s, and Pol Pot’s murderers of millions in the “killing fields” of Cambodia – all recent history.
But that’s not all that establishes Durbin as a paragon of virtue with respect at least to the law and conscience. This is from the Chicago Tribune of 30 December 2008: "U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D- Nevada) said in a statement this afternoon the Senate will not seat anyone Gov. Rod Blagojevich chooses to fill Illinois' vacant Senate post, amid word that the governor is set to name former Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris. The statement also is signed by U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, who has repeatedly urged Blagojevich not to name a replacement for the seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama. The statement specifically names Burris, but applies to any choice the governor might make."
This is from Reuters of 30 December 2008: "KAILUA, Hawaii (Reuters) - U.S. President-elect Barack Obama said on Tuesday he agreed that Senate Democrats 'cannot accept' any move by Illinois' scandal-tarred governor to name a replacement for Obama's Senate seat." Get the picture? Durbin joined Reid and Obama in purposefully attempting to violate the U. S. Constitution with respect to the requirements for filling a vacated Senate seat. They committed treacherous acts although they were not successful. Burris was seated and served out the term vacated by Obama. All three – Durbin, Reid, Obama – at this point were tinhorn crooks playing one of the lowest games of politics – ganging up on the perceived vulnerable.
All of this is part and parcel of why citizens hold politicians in such low esteem, including Obama, who stays below the 50% mark in approval ratings, though much of that is due to his blatant incompetence and his proclivity for using the executive to browbeat the Congresspersons and anyone else he deems worthy of his disdain. Disgusting!
Equally disgusting is the subject at hand. Three senators, either so blind to reality or so opportunistic that they can’t see beyond the bridges of their respective noses, disparage the least harmful of two substances in the name of protecting the youth while consequently approving the most harmful. So…does the above apply…or are they just dumb as gourds?
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Monday, January 02, 2012
PQRI...a Bad Joke?
The latest bureaucratic muddle emanating from Czar-Land, otherwise known as the Obama administration, is something called the Physician Quality Reporting Initiative, which ties the payment for medical treatment of old codgers, presumably anyone 65 and up and therefore on Medicare/Medicaid, to a report-card indicating physician-capability. Governmental bureaucrats with non-physician backgrounds will complete the reports that will separate the good doctors from the bad ones and determine the amount of reimbursement…or none…for each. It seems unclear as to what this amounts to vis-à-vis the doctors especially with respect to punishment or certification but, as Speaker Pelosi would counsel, this will be known only after the program is in place.
This could do for the elderly patients what No Child Left Behind has done for education – kill the process. NCLB has developed a national cadre of the mentally-challenged…a hopeless failure. The PQRI, hopefully, will not kill medicine, but don’t bet the farm. If it does, the old codgers may suffer and/or die but…hey…life is not forever.
PQRI will require a bureaucracy of immense proportions since there are some 800,000 practicing physicians in this country. Since it’s unlikely that the physicians will be required to take a written test (imagine the number of non-physician folks required to grade especially the essay questions), the appropriate bureaucrat will probably have to comb through records, follow-up on patient complaints, check the legal archives for lawsuits, practically live in hospitals and physician-offices and try to evaluate such hugely important things as bedside manner or the proper care of a hangnail.
One can imagine the bureaucratic red-tape connected to having a body exhumed in order to discover if a physician took out the wrong lung or left a wayward sponge among the pancreas, the better to determine if the surgeon was perhaps drinking on the job, a certain no-no in PQRI, and must therefore be given an “F” on his report card and, worse, paid nothing. One can just imagine the increased activity in law schools, which always benefit enormously when the Congress/administration comes up with new legislation/regulations concerning anything. Top Czar Sunstein, the chief among regulators, has already stated that animals should have access to lawyers, so one can only imagine how many lawyers will be needed by both bureaucracy and doctors to save the country from malpractice.
What would be the subjects of testing – operating-room procedure; time spent with patient; bedside manner; office manner; sterilization techniques; legible writing of prescriptions (although PQRI demands everything but probing for the appendix to be done electronically, including records and prescriptions); treatment of colleagues, including harassment of nurses by either doctor-sex; harassment of patients; proper suturing/stapling/bone-sawing; full disclosure of successes/failures regarding surgical procedures, including the number of patients who lived/died, and proper preparation of patient for appearing before the “death panels?”
Obviously, nothing but a hands-on approach could effect the proper grades for the physicians. Consider the bureaucrat observing a heart bypass operation despite the fact that he doesn’t know a respirator from an ATM and wonders if the doctor is in danger of freezing the patient to death in hugely lowering his temperature, standard procedure. A grader, probably in disguise, will have to be in or preferably near the hospital nurse-stations to observe physician behavior, with an especial eye to harassment, discrimination, and proper completion of forms, not to mention off-color or ethnic jokes in case someone is offended.
PQRI is an idea that should never have come, an absolute absurdity. The paperwork alone would be monumental, causing a huge increase in what doctors already have to charge in order to hire the huge staffs to handle it. To have government bureaucrats determining the amount to be paid case-by-case concerning Medicare patients is unthinkable. This is regulation carried to a degree unimaginable in a democratic society, clearly driving the health-care system into a socialistic venue, which has always been the goal of President Obama. One can expect that all the thousands of new workers will be unionized as Obama’s debts to union money and warm bodies slaving on the campaign trail will be discharged.
Regulations by czars such as those concerning the proper light bulbs and the proper structure of processed foods, and presidential executive orders such as the assault on Libya resulting in no one knows how many civilian deaths have been the name of the game during Obama’s tenure. The republican candidates are railing against this takeover of the country by stealth, and they’re right. The time has come to put a stop to it and hopefully that will happen in November with respect to both the unbelievably weak Congress as well as the presidency. If this doesn’t happen, this nation will join olde Europe in heading for the ash-heap of history.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
This could do for the elderly patients what No Child Left Behind has done for education – kill the process. NCLB has developed a national cadre of the mentally-challenged…a hopeless failure. The PQRI, hopefully, will not kill medicine, but don’t bet the farm. If it does, the old codgers may suffer and/or die but…hey…life is not forever.
PQRI will require a bureaucracy of immense proportions since there are some 800,000 practicing physicians in this country. Since it’s unlikely that the physicians will be required to take a written test (imagine the number of non-physician folks required to grade especially the essay questions), the appropriate bureaucrat will probably have to comb through records, follow-up on patient complaints, check the legal archives for lawsuits, practically live in hospitals and physician-offices and try to evaluate such hugely important things as bedside manner or the proper care of a hangnail.
One can imagine the bureaucratic red-tape connected to having a body exhumed in order to discover if a physician took out the wrong lung or left a wayward sponge among the pancreas, the better to determine if the surgeon was perhaps drinking on the job, a certain no-no in PQRI, and must therefore be given an “F” on his report card and, worse, paid nothing. One can just imagine the increased activity in law schools, which always benefit enormously when the Congress/administration comes up with new legislation/regulations concerning anything. Top Czar Sunstein, the chief among regulators, has already stated that animals should have access to lawyers, so one can only imagine how many lawyers will be needed by both bureaucracy and doctors to save the country from malpractice.
What would be the subjects of testing – operating-room procedure; time spent with patient; bedside manner; office manner; sterilization techniques; legible writing of prescriptions (although PQRI demands everything but probing for the appendix to be done electronically, including records and prescriptions); treatment of colleagues, including harassment of nurses by either doctor-sex; harassment of patients; proper suturing/stapling/bone-sawing; full disclosure of successes/failures regarding surgical procedures, including the number of patients who lived/died, and proper preparation of patient for appearing before the “death panels?”
Obviously, nothing but a hands-on approach could effect the proper grades for the physicians. Consider the bureaucrat observing a heart bypass operation despite the fact that he doesn’t know a respirator from an ATM and wonders if the doctor is in danger of freezing the patient to death in hugely lowering his temperature, standard procedure. A grader, probably in disguise, will have to be in or preferably near the hospital nurse-stations to observe physician behavior, with an especial eye to harassment, discrimination, and proper completion of forms, not to mention off-color or ethnic jokes in case someone is offended.
PQRI is an idea that should never have come, an absolute absurdity. The paperwork alone would be monumental, causing a huge increase in what doctors already have to charge in order to hire the huge staffs to handle it. To have government bureaucrats determining the amount to be paid case-by-case concerning Medicare patients is unthinkable. This is regulation carried to a degree unimaginable in a democratic society, clearly driving the health-care system into a socialistic venue, which has always been the goal of President Obama. One can expect that all the thousands of new workers will be unionized as Obama’s debts to union money and warm bodies slaving on the campaign trail will be discharged.
Regulations by czars such as those concerning the proper light bulbs and the proper structure of processed foods, and presidential executive orders such as the assault on Libya resulting in no one knows how many civilian deaths have been the name of the game during Obama’s tenure. The republican candidates are railing against this takeover of the country by stealth, and they’re right. The time has come to put a stop to it and hopefully that will happen in November with respect to both the unbelievably weak Congress as well as the presidency. If this doesn’t happen, this nation will join olde Europe in heading for the ash-heap of history.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
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