Webster, Southern Baptists & Togetherness

Larry Webster is a columnist for the Lexington Herald-Leader and can always be depended upon to provide a witty commentary on the times, often juiced-up with some poignant semantic-bombs dispatched toward a given group.  In the 8 July issue, he took dead aim at the Southern Baptists, who in their recent annual convention elected an African American (Webster didn’t give him a name) to be its president. 

On the basis of his collective writings when any of them pertain to religion (anyone’s), Webster would probably fall somewhere between being an atheist or an agnostic, though he might even be a Presbyterian just having some fun masquerading as a worldly-wise elitist, much smarter than God, of course, but humble enough to be a hillbilly, which he is.

Southern Baptists are a favorite target of the liberal establishment, mostly because they take definitive, often negative stands on subjects that liberals virtually glorify, such as homosexuality (Baptists see homosexual behavior as sin besides as loony tunes).  Also, other than the Catholic Church, the SBC is by far the largest denomination in the country, about 16 million members, with children counted only as they join, not as members because of being in member families. So, jealousy plays a part in Baptist-hating.

Webster lampooned the Baptists because of their electing the black to the highest SBC office and used the biblical (at least according to some scholars) fingering of Ham, Noah’s son, as being the “first brother,” i.e., taking over Africa.  Not to discriminate, Webster also implied that a “brother” would likely wear a huge gold cross on a chain around his neck.  Get it…a chain around his neck – liberal-think…those sinful slave-mongering Southern Baptists!  Webster says that the new black president probably is unchained, however.  Unchained…get it…those wooly Southern Baptists have set him free and even reconfigured him as Moses.

Webster then leaves that subject and devotes some paragraphs to lampooning Jesus, or at least the folks who believe he existed, perhaps appreciating him as a “kind of unisex and quasi-hippie … taller than the sheep,” at least if he should make the scene at a Theme Park, perhaps played by Turtle Man, whose water-experience would make him a likely Baptist, probably Southern, at that, with the sheep replaced by alligators or turtles or catfish.

However, Webster provokes thought, to wit, that it’s about time to stop making a huge issue out of every achievement by an African American that is considered a “first” for his race.  The Southern Baptists themselves made a huge issue of this matter, detracting from the more cogent facts accruing to the sterling qualities of New Orleans pastor Rev. Fred Luter, the new president.  This pervasive “first” designation actually belittles the person involved, implying that people of his race are not capable and are chosen only because of ethnicity.

Luter’s Franklin Ave. Baptist Church grew from a handful of people to 7,000 members by 2005, when Hurricane Katrina destroyed its building.  He led in getting his membership back and building a new church, which is now not large enough, necessitating plans for building another facility.  This is just one indication why he is more than able to handle the president’s responsibility.

Southern Baptists, perhaps in the light of the constant demand for “reparations” to current blacks for the “sins” of pre-Civil War whites, passed a resolution of apology in 1995 for pre-Civil War Baptists and presented it to leaders of the large black Baptist denominations, who scorned the apology, one even accusing the SBC of attempting to proselytize blacks from their churches, if memory serves.  One of the highest-profile leaders in the reparations movement is the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah (God damn America) Wright, President Obama’s mentor and former pastor.

This points up the fact that a person or group can’t apologize for something for which he/it was not responsible, any assumed guilt-trip notwithstanding.  It also points up the fact that trying to “orchestrate” togetherness for groups, especially those marked by a profound homogeneity, may not be a good idea. 

In the case of churches on the basis of the construct of the worship service alone, it may not even be possible in 95% of possibilities, owing to the different approaches by blacks and whites.  People should be left to simply gravitate toward the exercise or group-thing that is the most attractive or in which they have the best shot at doing good, assuming that the invitation has been extended.

As for Webster and his slamming of the Southern Baptists, the devil made him do it, of course.  The SBC supports over 10,000 missionaries, half in the Americas and half around the world, some in dangerous and hardship-driven locations.  They don’t just talk the walk, obviously, but walk the walk – and do the hands-on sometimes dirty work – healing, teaching, disaster-relief, etc.  When Webster sets up a system that large to do good…then, he can crow, and maybe even substitute for Turtle Man.

And so it goes.

Jim Clark

Sports-University Incest and Greed

This was the headline on the front page of the sports section of the 23 June Lexington Herald-Leader: A.D. Celebrates Partnership. Accompanying the article is a mile-wide-smile picture of the athletic director at the University of Kentucky and the caption “Mitch Barnhart’s department will contribute $3 million to scholarships.” Try not to gag. It was Barnhart who fired the basketball coach two seasons ago…oh yes…and gave him $3 million for the privilege. Some partnership! Everything carrying the UK name belongs to the university, so Barnhart wasted $3 million that could have gone for academic scholarships three years ago.

According to the article, UK President Capiluto asked Barnhart if he could “do something,” presumably about the financial constraints into which UK is currently mired, as are virtually all universities. On paper, the athletic department is somehow disconnected from the university and has its own budget but is the tail that wags the dog. Reading between the lines, one suspects Capiluto made it plain to Barnhart that he was not mincing words, if indeed the two even if had that conversation.

UK joins most universities, especially in the Southeast Conference, in corruption so palpable as to bounce off the walls. Capiluto began a change last fall when he persuaded the heretofore athletic-rubber-stamp board of trustees to dissolve the UK Athletic Association, over which Barnhart has been the emperor since he was hired in 2003, with UK paying off $100,000 to his former employer, Oregon State, since Barnhart walked out on his contract. Surprised? Contracts mean nothing in the world of sports.

The athletic department is awash with funds owing to the fact that college/university games have become entertainment gold-mines, with millions of TV dollars, as per conference rules, flowing to the universities or their “disconnected,” front organizations such as the former UKAA. Capiluto may have decided to gradually do what a former Vanderbilt University president did a few years ago, make the athletic department directly responsible to him, not some organization of fat-cats and grossly overpaid athletic department parasites out to milk the system for all it can.

The UK athletic department has 167 employees, give or take a few at any one time. University presidents are often complicit in the down-and-dirty game. For instance, just before he retired and without a word to the board of trustees in 2011, former UK president Lee Todd raised Barnhart’s base salary from $475,000 to $600,000 (for losing $3 million?), a whopping increase of 26% overnight and “extended” his contract by three years to 2019, worded, ironically, so that if Barnhart should be let go by Capiluto he would be well-paid (could be millions) for the trouble.

As a further example of corruption, the board of trustees awarded Todd $825,138 cash when he stepped down in June 2011, about half of it in the form of a contract-provision “retention bonus” (he stayed on the job for ten years). This is the way business is done in the universities, much if not most of the shakedown accounted for vaguely as bonuses, no matter how poorly the job has been done…the good ole boy network in full sleaze. Oh yes, Todd then went on staff at a cool $162,000 per year.

According to the Lexington Herald-Leader of 18 June, Todd’s predecessor stayed on for two years as a fundraiser of sorts at a cool $265,000, with about the only record being a record of expenses, and then stayed on from2003 until this month at $212,484 per year as a tenured associate professor at the Bluegrass Community and Technical College and [supposedly] researching for a book with the dean of libraries. It’s not known here if he taught any classes. One wonders if a book will ever make the scene. The H-L: “The university has struggled at times to quantify the specifics of Wethington's work since he left the president’s office.” Yeah!

The base salary of both the football and basketball coach is $400,000, with the former actually raking in $1.7 million and the latter closer to $3.7 million, each doing endorsements, talk-shows, etc., for extra money. According to USA Today (10 November 2009), on the UK football team in 2009 there were some nine(?) assistant coaches making a total of $1,946,213, the least paid at $159,625 and the best paid at $323,460, with the average at $216,245. Current figures are hard to come by but they doubtlessly are much higher.

Presently, there are also a grad assistant, student assistant and three video analysts, for a total of 15 staffers to handle 85 full-scholarship football athletes, though only eleven can be on the field at any one time. The basketball coach has three assistants, a special assistant (whatever that is), a strength coach and a trainer. The prime responsibility of probably most assistant coaches is recruiting. After all, how long does it take an already well-trained linebacker to learn how to knock down a wide receiver and, hopefully, give him a concussion in the bargain?

President Capiluto has already learned that UK, like all SEC schools but Vanderbilt, is always to be suspected of athletic-department skullduggery in finances, recruiting. Presidents usually have the prerogative of hiring the athletic director. The Todd-Barnhart institutional incest and greed are obvious at UK.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

President Obama’s tenure up to this point may well be noted by the historians for primarily three things: his misunderstanding or willful violation of both the intent and substance of the U.S Constitution; total ignorance of or willful manipulation concerning economics; and attempting to govern with the weakest, most incompetent Congress in history, in both its terms.  Obama’s contempt for the latter, occasioned by an unbelievable personal arrogance and animus, is about the only thing that has been transparent during his presidency.

Obama’s airtight, impeachable offense occurred in March 2011 when he by executive order, only, preempted Congress’s constitutional responsibility concerning war-declaration and apparently willfully violated the War Powers Act, as well.  The republican-dominated House could have, with little preparation-time needed, voted to impeach him.  He would not have been convicted and expelled from office by the democrat-controlled Senate, just as Clinton wasn’t when he was impeached, but the House should have taken a stand.  It stood down, perhaps fearing that such action would have been seen as politically or racially motivated.

The War Powers Act has a number of provisions but its main thrust is that no military action can be taken by the president unless the offending nation poses an immediate threat to the United States.  Libya posed no threat to this nation or any other nation, with its 76,000 troops and total population two million less than that of New York City.  Indeed, Qaddafi agreed to dismantle his weapons program in December 2003, with verification by the U.S.

Libya was/is 97% Muslim officially but has not been a serious terrorism-threat to this country since the 1980s, notably then by the 1986 bombing of a discotheque in Berlin and the downing of PanAm 103 over Scotland in 1988.  In 1986, ten days after the Berlin bombing, President Reagan ordered the bombing of targets in Libya.  Indeed, former headman Qaddafi warned Obama that al Qaeda was HIS enemy as well as this country’s.  It turns out that he was right.

So…why doesn’t Romney make the Libya issue front and center as he battles for the presidency?  Like the other republican candidates, except Ron Paul, of course, he was for doing-in Qaddafi even though the facts, as mentioned above, obtained during the Primary season.  Actually, the candidates were all over the map concerning Qaddafi and had no better excuse for doing anything than Obama had.

Romney brought himself to say ultimately that he was for going after Qaddafi but that the decision officially should have been made by Congress as per the Constitutional requirement concerning a declaration of war (or even according to the War Powers Act) and not as an executive order by the president.  Of course, Obama would deny that he gave an executive order but as a practical matter he did just that.  He would also deny that he precipitated an act of war against a sovereign nation but that’s precisely what he did.

The consensus seems to be that Obama acceded to the pressure for attacking Libya that was brought by three women – State Secretary Clinton, UN Ambassador Susan Rice and special assistant to the president and member of the NSC Samantha Power – on the basis of Qaddafi’s being a mean man who would kill all his citizens if he thought he had to…sort of like Syrian strongman Bashar Assad currently.  Clinton lately has been stamping her foot like a three-year-old and screaming that Assad has to go but she’s about as convincing and silly as Tweety Bird.

The consensus, mainly formed in the mainstream media, which is virtually a propaganda arm of the administration, may be the result of attempting to keep the onus for the Libyan bloodletting off Obama’s back, since his decision was dumb at best or criminal at worst.  Let the ladies take the heat, but blame them benignly since their motives were pure as the driven snow.  Hogwash!

The president, especially with the economy in the tank and unemployment remaining high, needed a diversion that could do two things: get the citizens’ minds off the recession, still in full bloom in March 2011 (and still is), and demonstrate his macho side, i.e., kill some folks and break some things.  Libya, without any sponsors, was the perfect patsy since it had no serious defenses and a military manpower quotient that was near zilch, especially when compared to other nations in the Muslim world.  The ladies had nothing to do with it…it was Obama’s show.

Mitt Romney could fly with this subject but he’s had virtually nothing to say, never mind his approach during the Primary season.  The technicalities of the Libya fiasco (does anyone know who’s in charge there now?) are totally unimportant.  The important aspect is twofold: (1) the Libya “event” was constitutionally illegal and (2) decent American military personnel were ordered to kill innocent Libyans.  Bombs and missiles are not addressed like a postcard.  They tend to kill everyone in the vicinity of their use, or their mistaken use…and did, even in residential areas.

Romney is obsessed with the economy, about which he may or may not have a clue.  Obama is obsessed with his reelection and certainly does NOT have a clue.  Romney could point a finger at the president and ask about Syria, where the murdering of citizens by the government is front-page daily news and infinitely worse than anything that happened in Libya by Qaddafi.  Romney could ask if Obama intends to set up a “no-fly zone/killing field” in Syria and then “lead NATO from behind,” despite Syria’s sponsors – Russia, China.

This makes too much sense…won’t happen, even in the hardball politics of an election year.

And so it goes.

Jim Clark

Romney & Obama’s “Achilles Heel!”

Newspaper's Race-mongering Continues

University of Kentucky President Eli Capiluto took office about a year ago and inherited the same mess endemic to practically all education institutions from public schools right through the universities, to wit, increased expenses coupled with recession-driven cutbacks of governmental funding. He’s now in the process of making the often painful adjustments that should have been initiated years ago. Instead, the former administration and trustees seemed too mesmerized by basketball to see the academic problem.

From the Obama “stimulus,” UK received some $38.5 million over the last two years that was supposed to create vast numbers of new jobs and improve the economy, neither of which has been accomplished. The money simply represented badly needed cash-flow. Now, the chickens have come home to roost and the problem has to be faced squarely.

In a recent message to university personnel, Capiluto explained the problem and enumerated steps to be taken because of it, as well as indicating immediate personnel-reductions amounting to 130 losses of jobs and the non-filling of 164 vacant positions that will help alleviate it. The cuts were made across the board in as fair a way as possible but with the faculty kept intact.

The Lexington Herald-Leader newspaper, which has made deep personnel cuts itself, predictably chose to make this circumstance into a front-page race issue since pension-eligible 65-year-old Chester Grundy, for more than 30 years the director of the UK Martin Luther King Cultural Center, was impacted, though, of course, with the golden parachute provided by the retirement system. Nine members of the administrative/executive/managerial staff, who were at least equal in rank with Grundy, were also laid off but they didn’t make the front page.

The newspaper mentioned that nine of those laid off were within a year of retirement but neglected to mention that they may be granted leaves until their retirement date so they will lose no benefits. Strangely, since it actually neutralizes the racism-thing, the paper messed-up and indicated the ethnicity of those being terminated. Eighty percent are white but only 7.7% are black and just 1.5%, Asian. Nationally, blacks make up about 13% of the population. The paper didn’t mention that UK has a department of African-American studies involving 18 staff and teachers.

The paper cited remarks by two UK graduates, whose Lexington experience didn’t seem to ruin them, one in a letter to Capiluto, though apparently also sent to the paper, and the other in a blog. Both are African-Americans and now professors, the former at Brooklyn College and the latter, Boyce Watkins, at Syracuse University. Watkins wrote, “he [Grundy] is an intelligent and conscientious black man, which is an academic felony on campuses like the University of Kentucky.” The paper should have considered this sophomoric bit of rubbish from a black-racist beneath contempt but apparently thought it was important. Watkins wrote the book, “What if George Bush were a Black Man?.” Nuff said!

The reporter/commentator (or somebody at the paper) interviewed Watkins by phone and quoted the professor as claiming that either UK or Lexington or both (she didn’t say) “was deeply committed to being on the wrong side of history.” Watkins, of course, knows what the right side of history is but he didn’t define it. Neither did the reporter. Indeed, one wonders how history can have two sides – right and wrong. History has nothing – it just is. Watkins knows, though, because he’s discovered that UK is on its wrong side and deeply means to be there. What hogwash! Watkins advertises himself on the Internet as a “Great Black Speaker.” Just call for fee information…when you stop laughing.

Grundy reckoned, according to the paper, that UK focuses on a multicultural agenda that doesn’t have much accountability for past wrongs. What wrongs? Whose wrongs? This is the kind of race-baiting that the community doesn’t need. If Grundy, made eminently successful by UK, was referring to slavery or the pre-1960s era before the rights-legislation and blaming the current generation for either, he was spouting the same old racist taunts to white people who have bent over backwards since the 1950s to practically make African-Americans a privileged class. The result has been disastrous to the black community.

For her part, the reporter/commentator claimed that UK “has had an uneasy relationship with Kentucky’s black community,” and gave as an example, most famously, that a former basketball coach, long since departed, was reluctant to recruit black players. This is an example of how the paper has lost no opportunities to foment racial strife for decades. Dredging-up something like that, especially since there are some actually compelling reasons for tension not just in Lexington but throughout the country, is banal if not childish.

The paper’s African-American publisher is the one man, because of his ethnicity, who could most justifiably put a stop to the paper’s decades-long attempt to make race an issue in Lexington. Instead, he most likely will join the pressure-group that will set out to make Capiluto, now a front-page goat, rehire Grundy…but no one else. Sad!

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

The Richard Land Affair

Much has been made in the media of the “Richard Land Affair.” Land is the head honcho, beginning in 1988, of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, with offices in Nashville and Washington, D.C. According to its Web-site, the ERLC “is dedicated to addressing social and moral concerns and their implications on public policy issues from City Hall to Congress.”

A graduate of Princeton University, New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and Oxford University in England (Ph.D), Land picked up some political experience as an administrative assistant to Texas Governor William Clements in the late 1980s. The media firestorm was precipitated by remarks he made on his 31 March radio show, in which he called African-American leaders such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton "race mongers" and "racial ambulance chasers" who are politicizing Trayvon Martin’s murder by George Zimmerman on 26 February in Sanford, Florida.

Land also indicated that young black men are understandably considered threatening since statistically they are more threatening than a white man to do harm. His statistics-reference probably had to do with the prison population of young black men, which is inordinately large compared to their overall population-percentage.

Land has apologized for the incident, of course, including for the fact that he plagiarized his comments from a column in the Washington Times. A prolific writer, he simply may have neglected to give the proper attribution through negligence. His radio program has been cancelled by the ERLC trustee executive committee.

As both a citizen and a Baptist, I inveighed heavily against the ERLC back in the day, figuring neither the Southern Baptist Convention nor any other denomination had any business messing in politics and also resenting the fact that one man, Richard Land, could speak for all Baptists about anything. The current brouhaha regarding the Martin-thing is yet another opportunity for ridicule to be heaped upon the denomination, as it has been before in Land’s appearances on TV talk-shows such as the former Larry King Live.

Having said that, I believe the plagiarism charge is the only one that holds any credibility. His remarks concerning the actions of Obama and others in fomenting racial upheaval was spot-on. Al Sharpton is best-known for his Tawana Brawley hoax, for which he was successfully sued. Jesse Jackson is best-known for using his organization’s hundreds-of-thousands-of-dollars to support his mistress and their “love-child.” These are the guys who made a 14-carat circus out of the Martin-affair and then got out of Dodge. Their moral bona fides were/are nonexistent.

When the president, without knowing any facts, solemnly intoned that if he had a son the boy would be a Trayvon Martin look-alike, he pushed the envelope too far. That remark reminded of his 2009 comment that, without his knowing any facts, the Cambridge police (specifically a white policeman) acted stupidly. Both instances involved race-baiting and were beneath contempt. Even Obama finally got it – or somebody in his mélange did – and he invited the policeman down to D.C. for a beer with him and Veep Biden, an incredible bit of hypocrisy.

The National African American Fellowship (about 3,400 predominantly black churches in the SBC) got in the usual snit regarding the need for an apology but Fred Luter, an African American pastor expected to become the SBC president this month, magnanimously spoke out in Land’s defense, another way of saying that Land had it right.

The SBC 1995 official resolution offering an “apology” for slavery, besides being wrongheaded since all the pre-Civil War SBCers had been long dead, was scorned by the head honchos of the African-American denominations. They knew that a person can’t apologize for something he didn’t do, which is what the naïve Baptist leadership tried to do.

The ERLC has outlived its usefulness, assuming it ever existed. It reminds of an organization initiated in September 2003 called the Clergy Network and later called the Clergy Network for National Leadership Change. It was a "527" organization, meaning that it was not tax-exempt. Its head was Albert Pennybacker of Lexington, Ky., a retired minister and former National Council of Churches honcho, and its headquarters was in the nation's capital. Sitting on its National Committee was James M. Dunn, former executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs, an organization dedicated to the "separation of church and state."

As explained on its web-site and indicated by its name, the CNNLC was formed for one purpose only, the defeat of President George Bush. It was made up of ministers and partly funded by the infamous billionaire anti-American, George Soros. It was a prime example of clerical mischief-making. Serving with Dunn was…yep…the Rev. Jesse Jackson. The ministers furnished the prime example of exponential hypocrisy.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Obama's Impromptu Press Conference

Most people, if asked what would tee them off more than anything else, would probably respond with something like “to be treated as a moron,” i.e., gullible to the point of ridiculousness. I was surfing the TV during some free time the other morning and happened upon President Obama giving what was termed an impromptu press conference. There likely was nothing impromptu about it since he said nothing new, at least while I was noticing, therefore bearing no expediency for a special session.

The “conference” was simply a campaign gimmick. The president seemed to look constantly at notes while he was drawing out his usual long a-n-n-n-ds, the clear implication being that many if not most/all reporters’ questions were planted. It was a press-secretary-Carney moment.

About the most profound thing I heard him say was simply that the nation has short-term and long-term problems, a stating of the obvious, to be sure, but one wonders if he believes most people don’t know that and that the enlightened must help the peasant-class understand. Actually, everyone and every institution has short-term and long-term problems.

The thing that rankles even now was his statement that the private sector of the economy was doing just fine. The unemployment rate has just officially (Washington-figured) increased to 8.2%, though the actual rate is much higher. This rate indicates that the private sector is operating nowhere near capacity, else there would be something close to full-employment.

This circumstance means that millions of Americans are not working and paying their taxes to the government, which is operating on funds borrowed from mostly China, so the private sector is not just fine and contributes zilch by its niggardliness vis-à-vis the taxes not paid by millions of unemployed workers the much needed funds to stabilize the economic situation. That’s economics 101, easily understood by high school seniors. Obama’s solution: higher taxes.

The president went to some lengths to explain that the happenings in Europe represent a huge problem for the U.S. economy since Europeans are not buying as much U.S.-made stuff as usual. European banks are in jeopardy, the unemployment-rate is high (something like 25% or more in Spain, for instance) and the president seemed to be saying that European economies need a stimulus plan, something every knowledgeable American knows was a complete failure in this country.

The strangest thing perhaps was his referencing his great accomplishments of 2009-10 (stimulus stuff & healthcare) without blinking an eye. Remember the “cash for clunkers” and the takeover and bankrupting of GM and Chrysler, thus paying back the unions. The nation is still in recession though the administration insists that it was over long ago. Former president Clinton recently suggested that the recession is not over.

The president mentioned that the country is now part of the global economy and, apparently, must sort of “roll with the punches,” good and bad. The nation has been part of the global economy since the time of its inception…nothing new there. Remember the rum/crops/slave trade of the 1700s, with the 13 former colonies in big business with Europe, Africa and throughout the Caribbean? Nothing has changed since then, so it’s an insult to the intelligence to be constantly reminded that other countries are to be blamed for what happens in this country.

The president specifically pointed out what to him, at least, is the big problem, to wit, that state and local governments are not hiring enough people and thus lowering the unemployment rate. This is the patently socialistic approach to the economy, i.e., that the state should be the primary employer. He specifically mentioned policemen and firemen and perhaps teachers and triggered remembrance of his 2008 campaign position that there should be a national police force commensurate to the military, in other words some 32,000 policemen on average for each state.

What he didn’t mention is the fact that the local/state governments took their share of the federal “stimulus” windfall borrowed from China and dumped it in their general funds because they were broke. Now, they’re cutting back on employment, not hiring, thus triggering lessened tax-revenue, meaning that the stimulus meant absolutely nothing as far as the economy (jobs) is concerned…money down the proverbial rat-hole, with no end to the colossal drain in sight…at least as long as Obama is in office. Obameconomics is a killer.

At bottom is the fact that stagnation will remain as long as entrepreneurs are convinced Obama was telling the truth in 2008, i.e., that he intended to “transform” this country, which has always been an unbelievably successful capitalist society, so the only transformation available is to the opposite economic model – socialism/communism, thus certain death for the American way of life.

Obama has materially delivered the disastrous “change” he promised in 2008. Now, a reverse-change is in order but it will not materialize – or at least quickly – unless Obama is turned out of office and the business of at least one house of Congress is overwhelmingly conducted by republicans.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

POTUS & Image-makeover

Dear President Obama:

First, a word of commendation for your clarifying your remark the other day about “Polish Concentration Camps.” It was a gem of wisdom to imply that the teleprompter was prepared that day by Vice President Biden or one of his aides, not that any sane person would have thought a person of your superior intellect made the remark, in the first place.

In light of your recent pronouncement that homosexuals should marry each other if so inclined, I’m offering the services, as CEO, of the Institute for Modifying All Governmental Entities (IMAGE, for short). Since there has been much backlash over this new position (predictably brought on by Biden the Blabbermouth, who didn’t see the November picture), IMAGE can guide you as you approach the election in the bravest manner possible, explaining that your thinking has “evolved,” something most people won’t do…either thinking or evolving, except, of course, as from ape to politician – little joke there.

The designer arm of IMAGE that will be operative for you is called Exigent Variances Offsetting Lurid Victimization of Erotic Reverse-Sexers (EVOLVERS, for short). It’s the business of EVOLVERS to make sure you do not appear as acting stupidly, as you rightly said police sometimes do in Cambridge. The argument will center on the sexual aspect of “diversity,” of course, the current guru/god of everything from academia to penitentiaries, where inmates are said to understand sexual diversity perfectly, i.e., that every form of human behavior, even if it is animalistic in nature, must be granted validity. This is called fairness, as you know. You exhibited this most nobly and fairly in your apology tour in 2009, inviting everyone in the world to ridicule and despise this nation for being so bad.

There are many people, especially in the South and especially among those squirrelly Baptists, who consider homosexual behavior unseemly, even sinful, though it is no longer illegal, even in Texas. Anachronistically, they insist that body orifices and appendages are meant by God for things like talking, singing, eating and exhausting detritus…and nothing else. The department of IMAGE that will help you is the Bureau Legitimizing Alternative Same-sex Parenting and Handling Errant Misbehaving Exes (known, of course as BLASPHEME).

Since homosexual promiscuity is consensually deemed by the anthropologists to be of inordinate proportions (also true for common-law marriages), the in-and-out appearances of same-sex parents can be traumatic for children and even sometimes dangerous for the parents, especially in the “legal-carry” states. Cuckolded straight hubbies could once just slap the old lady around but a cuckolded “partner” might beat the other “partner” to death or just shoot him. BLASPHEME prepares materials that validate the use of the body in any old way, never mind God’s design, and materials for explaining the whole hard-to-understand situation to the children.

Since technical help is needed in this unnatural and heretofore implausible setup, IMAGE provides the program, Management Accruing to Reverse Roles Inculcating Arrangements for Gender Establishment, or MARRIAGE, by its acronym. Most kids think in terms of mom-and-dad, not dad-and-dad or mom-and-mom. Partner-and-partner doesn’t sound very family-friendly, so what’s a kid to do, especially when asked on school questionnaires who his father and mother are? Partner-1 and partner-2 don’t sound right since nobody wants to be number two, with the kids perhaps obeying Partner-1 and dissing number-two. You and A-G Holder need to know the answers. IMAGE can help with this and other matters such as in how to decide which partner will be cloned.

On the basis of the heterosexual divorce rate of about 50%, the homosexual divorce rate will probably run to 85% or so – that promiscuity thing. IMAGE’s arm in this area is the Department for Instituting Various Options Regarding Concupiscent Errors, or DIVORCE, for short. The options, of course, have to do with property, custody of children, alimony, child-support, just as in the case of straights. Since partners may not know who-is-who (no mom or dad stuff), sharp lawyers may easily confuse them, not to mention that the agreements may not hold in any other state. You and A-G Holder need to assign proper appellations to the partners, something like accommodating the partner concept to the natural order of things.

MARRIAGE and DIVORCE can help with these latter problems and has prepared materials designed for marriages, courtroom and family-court appearances, protective orders in the case of an overzealous partner that cover everything from Saturday-night-specials to Sherman tanks, and suggesting who moves out and who stays. Since everything is eventually litigated in this country, Barney Frank and Bill Clinton, both lawyers, have agreed to head up these departments, the former account his orientation and the latter for the brilliant discovery of what IS is, vital to legal matters.

Your evolution in three short years from mom-dad – only – to dad-dad and mom-mom indicates your brilliance but also has its problems. I hope to hear from you soon.

Respectfully,
B. Appropriate Self, CEO
IMAGE

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

SCOTUS "Gang of Five"

University of Kentucky ultra-liberal history professor Ron Formisano writes regularly for the Lexington Herald-Leader, Lexington, Ky. In his 02 May column, he informed the whole country and all the ships at sea that the Supreme Court includes members that form the “Tea Party Gang of Five.”

Formisano: “‘The Supremes’ once meant Diana, Flo and Mary, but now conjures the most political and partisan U.S. Supreme Court since the 1930s, or maybe since the 1857 Dred Scott decision. The Tea Party gang of five (Justices John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Anthony Kennedy) act virtually as an ally of the Republican Party, and some have engaged in breaches of ethics.” WOW! He didn’t say which ethics but at least didn’t compare the “gang” to Hitler, the usual liberal choice for defamation-mongering.

Formisano didn’t condemn the “gang” for something it had done; rather, he castigated the “gang” for something he just knows it is about to do, namely, deep-six Obamacare, officially titled the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,” though some evil people consider its acronym PPACA to mean the “Physical Proportioning of Affirmative Care Act.”

Under this act, the appropriate czar decides who does and does not get a hip-replacement or (zounds!) who needs to check out and relieve Medicare of further payments. Contrarily, conservatives are nervous because of an element in the SCOTUS called the “Socialist Party Gang of Five” that threatens to approve PPACA.

The gang members might be enamored of something that legendary vaudevillians Groucho, Harpo, Chico, Gummo and Zeppo (Marxists?), might conceive, a zany reality show with the grand prize being the honor of pushing the old codger in the wheelchair off the cliff (a la the democrat TV commercial), a side-splitting skit straight from La-La-Land featuring a hopelessly insensitive republican drooling at the carnage.

Justice Kagan is an automatic aye-vote since she (not realizing that e-mail is so public) gushed her approval to colleague Laurence Tribe when the House passed the bill. “I hear they have the votes, Larry!! Simply amazing.” Stop giggling, y’all! At the time, she was solicitor general, involved in PPACA, and even appointed the main government attorney just in case the law was brought before SCOTUS.

According to 28 USC 455, a Supreme Court justice must recuse from “any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” The law also says a justice must recuse anytime he has “expressed an opinion concerning the merits of the particular case in controversy” while he “served in governmental employment.”

Kagan should have recused herself because of that requirement and this gem that she uttered in the recent hearing before SCOTUS: “Why is a big gift from the federal government a matter of coercion?” For Kagan, government is Santa Claus and the reindeer are hapless taxpayers, who are indeed coerced.

Justice Ginsberg came up with this wisdom during the hearing: “Those who don’t participate in healthcare make it more expensive for everyone else.” That’s the same as saying those who don’t use automobiles make gasoline more expensive for everyone else, ergo, the government should demand that all citizens drive cars, never walk except to the bathroom or ride bicycles.

Justice Breyer remonstrated with the government’s lawyer over his constant use of the term “tax,” insisting that nowhere in the Act is that word used; rather, that the term “penalty” applies to the poor guy who can’t or won’t buy insurance. The fact that he also can’t pay the penalty, presumably according to Breyer, means that he must simply go to jail or the emergency room, whichever grabs him first.

Justice Sotomayor, whose watershed ruling concerning racial discrimination (she favored it), was overturned by SCOTUS while she was in the process of being confirmed said in the hearing: “Why don’t we let Congress fix it [PPACA]?” Fix what? SCOTUS would have to tell Congress what needed fixing but Justice Scalia was of the opinion that forcing SCOTUS to read the whole 2,700-page law was cruel and inhuman punishment. Indeed, the Congress-people didn’t read it, either, before or after passage.

Sotomayor favors the Act but maybe doesn’t know exactly why, except perhaps that President Obama (self-admitted Constitutional expert) said SCOTUS had never overturned an Act with such overwhelming Congressional approval. PPACA barely made it through the Senate on Christmas Eve night 2009.

That leaves Justice Kennedy as the possible fifth Socialist gang-banger, since justices Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Roberts are expected to vote some or all of PPACA un-Constitutional. Kennedy has been accused of siding with the cons but he voted for KELO in 2005, approving condemnation proceedings against a landowner in behalf of taking her land to let private retail enterprises and a medicine factory occupy it to make mucho greenbacks. Today, it’s bare and has become an eyesore dumping ground.

Kennedy also wrote the opinion in 2003 overturning laws banning sodomy, which overturned a 1986 SCOTUS decision doing the opposite. In other words, Kennedy is the loose cannon, so all bets are actually off. On the basis of KELO, he might think the government can do anything it wants with respect to civil rights concerning hip-replacements and appropriate demises, and on the basis of the sodomy thing (political correctness, donchaknow) he probably got sucked in by retired Justice Stevens (anything goes), who eschewed oral arguments in D.C. and famously (or infamously) did his duty from Florida.

Even the five wacky Marx brothers couldn’t make up such stuff as the Socialist Party Gang of Five. SCOTUS schleps in June! Meanwhile, the professor listens to old Supremes records and rants.

And so it goes.

Jim Clark

In Memoriam

Someone mentioned to me a while back that I should check on some of the overseas newspapers to see how intense is the loss of this nation's "goodwill of much of the rest of the world;" however, I can read as much hatred for this country as they spew over there just by reading the mainstream press in the USA or watching NBC/ABC/CBS and their cable outlets. I couldn't care less about the goodwill of much of the world, or any of the world, for that matter. What I DO care about is the safety of this country.

As for American Imperialism, a favorite term for some of the dumbest detractors, just tally up all the lands in the world captured and now governed by the USA as the result of its victories for the last 100 or so years, during which it has been the difference between freedom and slavery for entire populations. I'm a lot more interested in the history of those 100 years than in what any foreign newspaper has to say about anything, or any other rag for that matter, like the New York Times or the Washington Post. Obviously, the key to security is having the strongest military establishment in the world – an establishment comprised of those who are prepared to give their all. Those who die in the process are honored each year at this time, and stood between this country and the tyrants who stop at nothing in their quest to undermine U.S. liberty and that of the rest of the world.

Europe realized freedom as early as 1917-18 (after four years of bloodletting) ONLY because of the USA (117,000 dead Americans); ditto for Europe and Asia 1941-45 (405,000 dead Americans); South Korea 1950-53 (37,000 dead Americans). How much of any of the countries involved in these conflicts does the USA own/govern today? How much of Vietnam from the fighting in the 1960s-70s (58,000 dead Americans), which would not have been communist today but for the incompetence in Washington?

After freeing it in 1991, how much of Kuwait and all of its oil belongs to the USA, or has ever belonged to the USA, this terrible imperialistic power so named by people like talking-head Pat Buchanan or perhaps the (gasp) foreign, sophisticated press? The USA did the dirty work regarding Serbia-Kosovo in the 90s, so how much of those countries does the USA own/govern today? All of eastern Europe was freed in 1989-90 from the Soviet Union ONLY because of the USA, and how much of that huge expanse does the USA own/govern today?

The USA also freed Cuba and the Philippines from Spain just over 100 years ago and maintained a presence in the latter, helping against Japan in WWII, and removing itself militarily, as requested, just a few years ago. Now, Muslim thugs are taking over that country. The USA could have made Cuba into a state, but it didn't, and now look at the mess there. To even mention imperialism in connection with anything this country has done militarily is to not only be patently wrongheaded, but also to be scurrilous to the point of malice.

Here is a tribute in this Memorial Day season to those who are the sentries and combatants in the never-ending struggle for freedom:

TYRANNY

The muffled sound of drum and fife
And musketry in mortal strife
And voices raised in anger, pain,
Or mourning those among the slain
Are sensed when contemplating still
The carnage of a Bunker Hill,
When only battles - bloody, fierce -
The wall of tyranny could pierce.

Then comes to mind the gory scenes
From Queenston Heights to New Orleans
When tyranny again was banned
Upon the sea, upon the land;
And one can sense again the sound
When roaring cannons shook the ground
And mortal men...to make men free...
Would enter immortality.

On Shiloh’s bloody ground that day
They died with valor in full sway,
Or Gettysburg...Chancellorsville,
Where brothers each might brother kill;
One hears the massive, tragic groan
As tens of thousands would atone
- With blood - for hated slavery...
The vilest form of tyranny.

When jaded beasts oppress the poor
And close to them sweet freedom’s door,
It falls upon the free...the strong
Throughout the world to right this wrong;
At Santiago, brave men fell,
And San Juan Hill became a hell,
But men who found eternity
Gained entry scourging tyranny.

Chateau-Thierry, Belleau Wood,
Where thousands died, but others stood
Their ground with blood and sweat and fears,
And buried comrades through their tears;
And one can sense the frightful sounds
Of tanks and planes emitting rounds
From lethal, modern weaponry
To end the threat of tyranny.

To end the threat of tyranny? -
Ah...no...remember Normandy,
Or Iwo Jima, Anzio,
Where once again the blood must flow;
And one may close the eyes and see
And hear the mighty guns at sea
And wonder why it all must be...
But knows deep down...end tyranny.

So listen!...hear the muffled roar
Of new jet planes now bound for war,
Of new invasions from the sea,
The dying fighting tyranny;
And names like Inchon, Pork Chop Hill,
And Bloody Ridge - remembered still -
Assault the mind, yet augur peace,
In hope that tyranny will cease.

But hope, though strong, has little worth
As long as despots roam the earth,
As long as beasts whose prime resource
Is tyranny...forge brutal force;
So listen...as the jungle screams,
And those who die are shorn of dreams
At Pleiku, Khe Sanh, and Da Nang,
Where flags from coffins daily hang.

No…evil tyranny survives,
Each generation robbed of lives
Attempting to wipe out its curse,
Each war the next one to rehearse;
Recall the battle in the sand -
Exploding missiles as they land
On Persian Gulf, Kuwait, Iraq,
Mad tyranny again to block.

As in most centuries before,
The twenty-first began with war
When evil men in Allah’s name
Torched innocents in bomb and flame;
The terrorists will find they pay
In Afghan mountains day by day
Or in Iraq on blood-black sand
An awesome price when good men stand.

************

In tranquil fields throughout the world,
Our dead are marked by flags unfurled,
Or marked by nature’s restless waves,
Beneath the seas in timeless graves;
Yes, thus it is, and thus will be...
Until God’s final, terse decree...
But until then, now strong and free,
The decent must kill tyranny.

Note: Reprinted from May 2008.

Same-sex Marriage & Religion

Regular columnist for the Lexington Herald-Leader Merlene Davis wrote this in the 24 May issue: “I don’t see same-sex marriage as a religious issue,” the implication being that it’s merely a matter of civil rights. She exampled her marriage, not performed in a church and conducted by a justice of the peace, and wrote this: “It didn’t have a thing to do with religion.” Obviously, it wasn’t a same-sex affair, so for her no marriage is a religious issue.

So…even though marriage hadn’t a thing to do with religion, she went through the usual litany of “sins” listed in the Bible that are as bad as homosexuality, perhaps never realizing that homosexual behavior and not the homosexual is the subject of condemnation. She indicated that all sins except blasphemy are forgivable, another way of saying that if it feels good do it because God is lenient.

Ironically, after insisting that religion had nothing to do with her marriage, let alone same-sex marriage, she spent a whole column discussing how religion does have everything to do with marriage, though she did digress sufficiently to insist that Romney isn’t fit to be president because of his insensitivity to the poor and elderly, which, of course, had nothing to do with her subject.

Not wishing to allow her extensive lesson in theology to be shallow, Davis strangely quoted instances in both the Old and New Testaments in which homosexual behavior is roundly condemned, even to the point of the death sentence being mandated for such aberrant behavior. She was careful not to mention Sodom and Gomorrah, however, since that exemplary wrath of God could hardly be spun into forgiveness.

Many religionists make much of the OT law being segued into NT grace, thereby excusing most anything if it feels good. President Obama’s denomination – United Church of Christ – officially sanctioned same-sex marriage in 2005. Jesus said he came, however, to fulfill the law and not negate it. He also brought up the subject of Sodom and Gomorrah in his condemnation of other worldly cities (Matthew 11). Homosexual behavior was anathema to him, totally unacceptable.

It remained, then, for the apostle Paul to explain that aberrant behavior was also to be condemned “under grace,” i.e., that God didn’t mean for the body, which is sacred because God made it in his image, to be defiled by using the elements designed for the procreation of the race in unseemly ways, such as in oral and anal “sex,” which actually isn’t sex at all, just unnatural use of body appendages and orifices.

Davis made much of the fact that the NAACP has come out in favor of “marriage equality,” whatever that is, though to her it meant same-sex marriage. What she didn’t mention is the fact that black folk don’t put much stock in any kind of marriage, more than 70% of black youngsters born with no documented father, i.e., parents who didn’t bother with marriage, which involves necessary but bothersome commitment. In 1960, about 75% of children were born to black “families” – mother, father. Things have changed.

This was Davis’s coup de grace: “Short of blasphemy, God doesn’t calibrate sins, even if we do.” She has no more idea of God’s “calibration” than an orangutan does, but she’s welcome to her own calibrations, which obviously indicate that since a murderer can be forgiven, his sin is no worse than the sins of gossiping/gluttony, which she mentions. Weird!

Blasphemy is defined as “irreverence toward something considered sacred or inviolable.” Violating God’s in-his-image handiwork, the human body governed through the gift of self-determination, by abusing its only instruments for perpetuating what continues in sacredness is aptly discussed in Deuteronomy 8:19-20, in which it is made clear that God can and will destroy nations that collectively succumb to defiling his creation. This country travels a moral slippery slope. One should remember the lessons of history vis-à-vis other great rotting-from-the-inside nations such as the Soviet Union, in real time.

None of this matters to Davis, of course, since it has to do with religion, which she says has nothing to do with marriage, though she devoted an entire column to biblical influence on marriage, which makes her attempt at a disconnect futile. She seemed to be preaching to herself, rather than making a point, sort of advancing the paper’s editorial stance.

And so it goes.

Jim Clark

Is Licentiousness Normal?

All the networks/media, mainstream and otherwise, have been having a field-day regarding the Secret Service agents and military personnel vis-à-vis their cavorting with prostitutes in Colombia just prior to the president’s visit there. Folks have been suspended or transferred or perhaps been resigned to their fate and just quit.

The guys didn’t break any laws since prostitution is legal in Colombia but, according to the propaganda, they must be held to a “higher standard,” though one wonders how that actually plays in Washington, where “higher standard” is a joke. The most recent sex-joker in the presidency was Bill Clinton but presidents down through the years have been caught in all sorts of bizarre behavior.

John F. Kennedy has been well documented, for instance, as having his paramours in and out of the White House and probably most everywhere else. He shared a mistress with a Mafia-associated gangster, among other weird happenings, but no one blamed the Secret Service for letting him endanger the nation.

President Obama, back in the 1980s, lived with a woman not his wife (not racist comment…she was white), sort of playing gigolo to her prostitute. He hasn’t seemed to be inordinately shocked and appalled at the conduct of his agents and that may be the reason…sort of anything goes as long as the dallier doesn’t cause a problem, which, in the extant case, probably would never have been made public if one of the agents hadn’t cheated on the fee.

This is no brief for the errant agents/troops. What they did was despicable because it was morally wrong, especially in the case of the married ones, who could and probably did take some sort of STD home. In their ecstasies, especially if enhanced by booze, they could have spilled vital information. If some of their “ladies of the night” had been Colombian agents or those of another country, there might have been serious trouble.

Lost in the media condemnation of the men, as usual, is the fact that, while they bought bodies, it was the women who sold them. As they report about the cads, the giggling gals in “TV-News” programs, dressed in their off-the-shoulder and off-their-other-body-parts frocks, come across as shallow, if not hypocritical. They flounce around with enough cleavage and thigh showing to compete favorably with the Colombian street-walkers. The men, conversely, are dressed to the nines head-to-toe.

This has made the “news” programs a sort of exercise in cheesecake frivolity. Sitting across from Wolf Blitzer or Bill O’Reilly in a pose calculated to make at least all the male viewers hear very little of what’s said seems almost to be a requirement of the ladies, and one wonders if they might better appear more modestly, especially when, with their features hanging out or bared to the limit, they intone about serious subjects such as the awful deaths in Afghanistan…sort of like attending a funeral in a bikini.

This circumstance makes one wonder if the hippy-dippy generations (two of them now), who have been running the show for a long while with respect to entertainment, government and even the church, have damned the society with a permissiveness that glorifies licentiousness, sexual and otherwise. Without question, morals have degenerated to the point, for instance, that condoms are distributed in public schools, thus inviting the students to copulate like so many rabbits…at every opportunity.

Ah well…this is the sort of diatribe that the elites such as the intelligentsia on college campuses and the Hollywood types decry as coming from a religious nut or a crazy do-gooder, someone so far behind the times that he even believes homosexuals shouldn’t (actually physically can’t) marry each other. The president, on the other hand, has evolved through his superior intellect in just three (a four-letter word, for Biden) years to the point that he sees virtue in such couplings, never mind the consequent, aberrant behavior.

So…what about the jerks in Colombia? Were they just “doing what comes naturally” as defined by the flower-children and their children, who have managed to turn the culture upside-down since the sixties? Well…yeah. The elitists, with a voluminous glee, flaunt their idiocies as being perfectly normal, and the nation suffers, rotting from the inside out. God defines sin. Humans define morals…and currently the twain are mutually inclusive. Sad!

And so it goes.

Jim Clark

DNC Memorandum #9

From the Office of the ChairWOMAN, 19 May 2012

***LISTEN UP! Unfortunately, the conservative-media Neanderthals have noted lately that POTUS had a thing for white women (probably not “typical white persons” like his grandmother but proof that POTUS was not prejudiced – little joke there) when he was a New York resident, before heading for Chicago and hooking up with the Bill Ayers crowd (no pun intended), thus fornicating on a daily basis since marriage was never an issue. The ladies had enough money for protection, unlike poor Sandra Fluke, whom POTUS called and agreed that government should add condom-care to Obama-care the better to forestall pregnancy, another name for assault and battery by males. Discuss this freely in town-hall meetings in San Francisco but deny that it ever happened when canvassing in the South since fornicating is frowned upon there, not that it isn’t common…just not talked about. The rumor that FLOTUS threatened POTUS to within an inch of his life over this is untrue and FLOTUS has said she will not do it again.

***Be aware of the fact that POTUS has okayed the visa of POC Raoul Castro’s daughter, Mariela, to come to the States and agitate for homosexual marriage. Since POTUS has said homosexuals should be married to each other if so inclined, plan rallies with mock homosexual weddings featuring receptions with rhumba-bands and rum-colas instead of punch-bowls. Be careful with the rum-colas, however, since drunken grooms might get into a real fight and cause a scene (Obama has said cops act stupidly so they might embarrassingly arrive), whereas in a heterosexual marriage a drunken groom usually just mumbles or passes out but does not attack his bride, whether or not she’s drunk, too. Ms. Castro will attend conferences in San Francisco (where else?) and Washington, sometimes known as the snake-pit on the Potomac.

***If someone in a rally mentions the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, act as if you never heard of him. If you are caught in that subterfuge (lies are permissible, even desired, in campaigns), claim that Wright is bad-mouthing POTUS because he’s tired of being under the bus and if not allowed to give the invocation soon in some convocation or other has threatened to get even by talking about that $150,000 bribe-offer in 2008 for not preaching until after the election. In this connection, there will be a seminar at headquarters soon on the finer points of spinning a lie. It will be led by VPOTUS, whose plagiarism that distinguished him in 1988 and recent claim that “jobs” is a three-letter word make him eminently credible. He will be aided by Senator Durbin, who is still spinning his remarks concerning American GIs, to wit, that they compare favorably with Stalin’s keepers of the Gulags, Hitler’s storm-troopers, and Pol Pot’s keepers of the Cambodian killing fields, all of which involved 60-70 million murders or so…but who’s counting anyway? Homeland Security Chief Napolitano is still spinning her warning to citizens a while back to beware of GIs returning from Iraq and Afghanistan account they might go on rampages at any time and become “man-caused disasters,” her definition of terrorists.

***Say as little as possible about former president Clinton’s current effort to have State Secretary Clinton replace VPOTUS on the ticket in November. Even though she’s a soul-sister to POTUS, she would likely completely bankrupt the country in a year. It’s already in bankruptcy but POTUS, busy as a bee on Air Force One every day, hasn’t noticed yet. Bill misses the nooks and crannies in the White House that are perfect spots for homo-eroticism like oral sex with young girls and encrypted telephone lines for phone-sex, something he should have thought about back in the arcane 90s. This partly explains the recent peccadilloes of the Secret Service in Colombia, who understood that the “anything goes” rule was in operation for everyone on Bill’s trips anywhere, even to the bathroom, and haven’t readjusted yet.

***Help people understand that the “domestic drone” operation is not eavesdropping on innocent citizens since there are security cameras everywhere these days such as in all stores and on their humongous parking-lots/garages, on many street-corners, and in high-school bathrooms, which are also equipped with smoke- and hidden metal-detectors. Remind voters that POTUS called for a national police force in the 2008 campaign that would be comparable to the size and scope of the military. This hasn’t happened because bailing out the banks, signing the Stimulus, and bankrupting General Motors and Chrysler sucked the energy out of the financing. Upon reelection, this issue will be on the front-burner, with Mao’s China, Kim Il Un’s North Korea, and Hitler’s Germany as paradigms, though terms such as Gestapo and KGB are not to be used.

***As you know, the theme of the POTUS campaign is FORWARD! The wag whose poster GREAT LEAP FORWARD was mysteriously pinned on the wall next to the George Bush dart-board along with a picture of 30 million Chinese bungee-thumpers will be disciplined by having to write an essay on why Mao’s plan failed…700 million people dispatched to 27,000 communes, where the thumpers starved or got trampled. There aren’t half that many people in the U.S. and POTUS’s plan for the National Police Force is said to require relocation for only republicans anyway, where they will mostly turn wheat and corn into ethane…or methane…or whatever thane works. On calm days, they will also pedal the energy producing windmills to keep them turning and shine bright lights on solar panels on cloudy days.

***Materials are being designed as public-school handouts encouraging youngsters to report any tires that seem to be under-inflated, even if the tires are on the family car; traditional light-bulbs even if on in-house lamps; and any food that tastes too salty even if straight from the family grill or the school lunchroom. Youngsters turning in the most reports will receive plaques signed by FLOTUS, provided the reporters have the proper body-mass indexes. Pictures must accompany each report so the proper determination can be made. This does not constitute BMI-discrimination because POTUS has said it doesn’t and POTUS is a Constitutional expert by his own admission.

*** In his recent West Virginia speech, the Rev. Dr. Wright claimed that SCOTUS Justice Clarence Thomas worships “some other god” but didn’t say which one, so there’s been a request, as noted in Memorandum #8, from the White House for a red/yellow/black/white paper outlining all the possibilities, the better to smear him into retirement. None has been received, so redouble your efforts and if at all possible prove that he’s a soul-brother to Major Hasan, the Fort Hood man-caused disaster, and deifies Allah. That should also make HS Chief Napolitano happy.

And so it goes.

Jim Clark

The Homosexual Problem

Two accounts in the Lexington Herald-Leader of 14 May dealing with the subject of homosexuality provide a look at the rationales used by different “gay” groups to insist that society recognize their uniqueness and respond to it in specific ways connoting total acceptance of their “normalcy,” which, on the behavioral level, is anything but normal, i.e., with respect to physical manifestations. This is not said pejoratively but simply as fact.

Two lesbian students at a local Catholic high school were denied attendance at the annual prom account their insistence upon participating as a “couple.” They were upfront about their relationship, which is sanctioned as unacceptable, even sinful, by the Catholic Church. If they had attended as “singles” or with male escorts they would have had no problem but they preferred to flaunt their relationship, so they held their own concomitant prom in the parking lot, complete with refreshments and music.

They were joined by other students, teenagers easily convinced that their classmates had been mistreated, not surprising when immaturity rules and features rebellion against the status quo and/or authority as a matter of course, indeed a sort of rite of passage.

The second article was headlined “Gay political donors move into the mainstream,” insisting that this was proven by huge amounts of campaign contributions generated by homosexuals and homosexually-oriented groups such as the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, with the recipient of the largesse being President Obama. It’s no small coincidence that Obama has “evolved” from affirming homosexual marriage in the 1990s to a rock-hard position in 2008 that marriage is between a man and woman to his current belief that homosexuals should be allowed to marry each other, an example of flip-flopping based on expediency. He now has a campaign adjunct agency called the LGBT Leadership Council, a fund-raising committee operating officially in his behalf.

Supposedly, it’s about civil rights since married couples, i.e., a man and woman legally married, have rights, especially as concerning financial and insurance matters, that homosexual “partners” lack. For instance, a homosexual’s perks on the job may not obtain for his “partner” while they may for a legal spouse. Thus, the “partner” has to shift for himself/herself, connoting unfairness. This makes Obama the go-to guy with respect to politics since republicans, in the main, insist upon the Defense of Marriage Act passed in the 1990s, mandating marriage as only between a man and a woman.

The teenage girls accused the school of treating them unfairly because it allowed prom-attendance to their classmates who fornicated, also a sin according to the church, indeed most churches. They were probably right in accusing their classmates but neglected or failed to see the difference between what’s done in private and claimed in public (their case), though their intimate relationship was as private as those of their fornicating classmates. If there had been a couple describing itself as fornicating, it likely would have been disallowed at the prom.

The immature teenagers were seeking social acceptance for their abnormality, whether acquired or genetic. The GLBT group seeks, besides social acceptance that will never be possible, political leverage in order to gain materially while at the same time striking out at legal marriage as not uniquely qualified for defining governmental responsibilities, notwithstanding that the marriage contract suffices for the legal standing of children and their support, and mandates provisions applicable to inheritances, for instance, and other contractual/legal considerations.

Most homosexuality defenders, regarding governmental or other status, accuse detractors of opposition for religious reasons, admittedly the case with many. However, the sociological/biological/psychological differences in the genders – with no religious bearing – provide the actual reason militating against homosexual marriage, to wit, that the fundamental unit of society is the family as formed by natural method and eventuating in the propagation of the human race.

The perverted use of bodily appendages and orifices designed for the high-flown objective of perpetuating humanity is a form of debauchery, the rotting-from-the-inside that has brought down governments consistently throughout history, as everything from rampant incest/pedophilia to homosexual behavior to indiscriminate sex and sex-orgies spelled their doom, the sensual trumping the mental, matter over mind, a sure killer for any society.

And so it goes.

Jim Clark

Obama & States' Rights

In an interview on ABC News (where else?) on 09 May, President Obama said, “I've just concluded that for me, personally, it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.” Grammar students might cringe at the redundancies but Obama probably was not using a teleprompter.

One shakes his head in wonder at the statement since it indicates that the president may be unaware of the primary definition of “marriage,” which is, “the state of being united to a person of the opposite sex as husband or wife in a consensual and contractual relationship recognized by law.” (Merriam-Webster Collegiate, 11th edition)

The secondary definition is, “the state of being united to a person of the same sex in a relationship like that of a traditional marriage.” In this instance, obviously, the relationship is not “recognized by law,” but is just traditional, i.e., mostly with some sort of ceremony. This (traditional) is already done in some states, with whatever is thought to be legal not applying in any other state, so the participants are not “married” anywhere but in the state where their ceremony took place.

So…how does the president figure that same-sex couples become “able to get married,” at least legally, with respect to the accepted definition? There’s only one solution, to wit, one partner must have a sex-change operation, becoming a member of the opposite sex. This, of course, may lead to problems since upon becoming the other gender the changed partner may not find marriage to remain attractive…may even start chasing “skirts” or “hunks,” depending on whoever made the change.

Silly, you say? Well…maybe. The element that’s always a possibility (most of the time a probability) in a marriage is the making of babies, something that cannot happen in a sex-act between members of the same sex, though there’s no such thing as a “sex act” between homosexuals anyway. Their erotic behavior is merely some sort of unnatural use of their bodies. Neither oral nor anal “sex,” for instance, can produce a pregnancy, i.e., the perpetuation of the race.

Indeed, homosexuals may like mutual hook-ups for the very fact that they can engage their sex organs ecstatically without the worry of possible offspring. The same is true with heterosexuals who engage in oral or anal sex…plenty of huffing and puffing and sucking without the worry of needing an abortion.

This brings up an important issue. In the same interview with ABC News (where else?), the president said he supports the concept of states deciding the homosexual-marriage issue on their own. Whoa!!! What, then, does the president think about abortion vis-à-vis states’ rights? Does he think the SCOTUS should encourage an invitation to revisit Roe-Wade or an individual should sue over the matter? Isn’t abortion the same type of “privacy” issue that homosexual marriage is? Well, of course!

To carry out his contention, the president himself should undertake the effort to either make the Defense of Marriage Act, now as settled law, into a Constitutional amendment, as 30 states have done and nine others have otherwise done legally, or engage action to have Roe-Wade overturned as a federal matter, with the states again being responsible for deciding about abortion.

Since Roe-Wade in 1973, there have been better than 54.5 million abortions covering two generations. If the first generation had not been aborted and had 1.5 children per marriage, there would have been about 92 million more citizens by now, making the total population at near 400 million. This is a matter of huge importance regardless of how people view abortion.

Perhaps the president had not thought out his statement before making it or perhaps his “handlers” hadn’t given it a thought before telling him what he thinks. Actually, he has no position on marriage because he’s been all over the map on the subject but it’s a leadpipe cinch he will make no statement regarding Roe-Wade since to try to return abortion matters to the states would lose his biggest cadre of voters – women. The abortion rate has leveled off to “only” 1.2 million per year, possibly disappointing the feminists, but those silent murders represent success or failure for Obama at the ballot box.

And so it goes.

Jim Clark

Obama & Homosexuality

According to The Telegraph, a prominent Italian historian, Roberto De Mattei, claimed in April 2011 that the Roman Empire collapsed because a "contagion of homosexuality and effeminacy" made it easy pickings for barbarian hordes. That didn’t set well with the “progressives” in Italy but the ancient empire in its day was just like the U.S. is (or is said to be) now, too militarily strong to be defeated by any nation. By recent actions, homosexuals have been invited into the military (where the boys are) in this country and so the citizen can draw his own conclusions.

More to the point, the president has just announced that he deems it perfectly natural for men to marry men, thus sanctioning the perversions connected to homosexual “sexual” exercises. In 2008, he claimed in no uncertain terms that marriage was between one man and one woman. He hasn’t said yet if homosexual marriage is between one man and one man, nor can he because there is no relevant law (as pertaining to bigamy or polygamy). So…homosexuals can marry as many as they please, as long as a government apparatchik will perform the dishonors in states allowing homosexual marriage.

Incredibly, Obama (February 2011) has declared that his administration does not and will not enforce the Defense of Marriage Act passed in the 1990s, which is federal law, making it perfectly alright, according to him, for anyone to choose which laws to obey and which ones not to obey. Ditto for local law-enforcement agencies with regard to enforcement. The prez was at one time a law school “lecturer” whose expertise accrued to his understanding of the Constitution, so go figure. He swore to faithfully execute the office (Article 2, Section 1), meaning enforcing acts passed by Congress and signed into law (Clinton). His words reveal his unworthiness.

Also incredibly, Obama said he consulted with his daughters, ages ten and 13, regarding this matter and is abiding by their views. This remarks the time when Democrat President Carter consulted with his daughter Amy, 13, as to what the most important consideration was in 1980. She decided on nuclear weaponry and the control of nuclear arms. She certainly didn’t mention the U.S. hostages held in Iran. Carter has affirmed that he thinks same-sex unions should be officially sanctioned, so the DOMA wouldn’t have meant anything to him, either, though he probably would have had sense enough to enforce it.

The president said his attitude concerning marriage has been “evolving.” It has, and it started back in the 1990s, when he ran for a seat in the Illinois Legislature. It is documented in concrete that he affirmed then that he believed in homosexual marriage. By 2008, he had “evolved” to the point that he believed marriage was a one-man-one-woman thing only. In 2012, he has “evolved” into believing homosexuals should be allowed to marry each other if so inclined. He has “evolved” into a complete revolution, notwithstanding that 30 state constitutions define marriage as heterosexual only and that 39 states bar homosexual marriage by law.

Obviously, Obama has no position on marriage. His definition depends entirely upon expediency, just as his approach to just about everything else does. His backers are the ultra-liberal Hollywood types who pour millions into his campaigns. The hoi polloi, like the vast majority of North Carolina voters who just approved a non-homosexual-marriage constitutional amendment to go along with its current law that does the same thing, mean nothing when payback time to the elite is at hand. Obama defined them in 2008 as clutching their Bibles and firearms and chasing illegal immigrants. In other words, he considers them to be ignoramuses.

Vice President Biden, probably as planned by Obama, came out for homosexual marriage to NBC’s David Gregory on 06 May and probably considers “weds” a three-letter word. Education Secretary Duncan did the same the next day on another program, both instances probably planned in conjunction with the appropriate media. Until last year, Kevin Jennings worked for Duncan as head of the Office of State and Drug-free Schools. Jennings, a homosexual, founded the Gay Lesbian and Straight Education Network. As another czar regulating schools, he had a lurid history of promoting homosexuality in the schools.

Hilary Rosen, apparently the resident lesbian in the Obama White House, recently castigated Romney’s wife for having never worked, though she has raised a sizeable family of five sons. SCOTUS justice Kagan could but does not settle the question of whether or not she’s a lesbian. If she is, she would be an idiot to do so, though the president has given the green light. The public outcry would be loud and long.

In October 1964 just before the election, Walter Jenkins, President Lyndon Johnson’s right-hand man and daily operator in the White House (would be called chief of staff today), was arrested account apprehended having sex with another man in a YMCA toilet in Washington. He was gone from the scene immediately, his career in presidential politics ended. He had a further lurid history concerning his homosexuality. In that same circumstance today, Obama would welcome him to the party. Jenkins, a Catholic, and his wife had six children, so it would appear that for him homosexual behavior was a choice that might have totally compromisd him with respect to such things as national security.

Obama welcomes that sort of potential catastrophe to the White House. As Italian Roberto De Mattei would have it, the president encourages the country’s rotting-out from the inside.

And so it goes.

Jim Clark

The Professor & TEA-SCOTUS

University of Kentucky history professor Ron Formisano writes regularly for the Lexington Herald-Leader, Lexington, Ky. He has the “compare-anything-I-don’t-like-to-Hitler-syndrome,” i.e., he compares his naysayers to something b-a-a-a-d in order to make his point. In his February column, he compared the Republican Party to “the posture of the slavery-dominated antebellum democracy.” Whew…that’s about as bad as it gets!

In his 02 May column, he informed the whole country and all the ships at sea that included in the Supreme Court is the “Tea Party Gang of Five.” To a liberal of Formisano’s profound persuasion, that’s also about as bad as it gets and indicates that justices Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Kennedy are lower than a democrat’s IQ (also as bad as it gets), some of them actually having (gasp) “engaged in breaches of ethics,” though he didn’t remark their perfidies.

Formisano didn’t condemn the “gang” for something it had done; rather, he castigated the “gang” for something he just knows it is about to do, namely, deep-six Obamacare, officially titled the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,” though some evil people consider its acronym PPACA to mean the “Physical Proportioning of Affirmative Care Act.” Under this act, the appropriate czar decides who does and does not get a hip-replacement or (zounds!) who needs to check out.

Though it’s probably not noted on his resume, the professor deems himself to possess clairvoyance, defined as the “ability to perceive matters beyond the range of ordinary perception.” To get an idea of Formisano’s sagacity, one notes this in his February column: “The conservatives among the nation's founders wanted a strong central government.” This is another way of saying these devilish conservatives wanted Washington to be the new king. They obviously had nothing to do with Article I, Section 8, and all of Article II of the U.S Constitution.

In his column, Formisano delivered an analysis of each member of the “gang.” He noted that Scalia, the court’s “intellectual giant,” was actually “calculating potential Republican Senate votes to overturn the law.” If that’s the case, Formisano destroyed the whole premise of his screed since Scalia would hardly be expected to overturn the law if he was lining up the senators to do it because he couldn’t.

Maybe there’s something in the water at the university faculty lounge. In a December column in the H-L, one of Formisano’s fellow professors, Robert Olson, remarked that four million people died during the Civil War to save the Union. That was 18% of the population in the North. The revision of history is a favorite liberal cause but one might expect a somewhat subtler approach than that.

Perhaps to guard against being labeled a racist, Formisano chose to excoriate Justice Thomas’s wife, who is white, expecting the reader to get the subtle connection…that old “judge a person by the crowd she hangs with” thing. Formisano called her a (drum roll, please) “Tea Party activist,” maybe as dangerous as Obama’s buddies/sponsors/supporters Bill Ayers and his wife, who went around blowing up buildings, shooting at people and robbing whatever wasn’t moving when they consorted with the Weather Underground.

Formisano called Justice Alito a “Tea Party hero” but didn’t say if that was better or worse than being a “Tea Party activist.” He said Alito disrespected the president during a State of the Union speech by shaking his head and conspicuously “mouthing, ‘Not true’.” Yes, Alito did just that when the prez orated a lie. Being attacked by a truth can be traumatic for liberals, ergo, forswear dealing with truth. Give the man credit, though, since mouth-reading is an art that few people have, though bad-mouthing is actually Formisano’s forte.

Formisano reserved the dreaded “What would Jesus do” condemnation for Justice Kennedy, citing the biblical “Good Samaritan” as the anti-Kennedy, even though the subject of his condemnation had to do with the blind man noted by Kennedy in the hearing, just as biblical and eminently more appropriate to the screed. Liberals have a tendency toward mixed metaphors when they attempt to use the Bible, assuming they know the difference between it and Mein Kampf or the Communist Manifesto.

Formisano administered the coup de grace to Chief Justice Roberts, however, for his unbelievably (reach for the smelling salts) misleading of…yep…the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. Nothing could possibly be worse than accusing the nation’s top jurist of lying to the Senate, even though it also has its share of liars. Vice President Biden, the Senate’s most infamous plagiarist, was on that committee and voted against the Roberts nomination.

Formisano was fair enough not to mention the other justices (perhaps called the “Afternoon Tea Gang”)…didn’t even give them a political-party mention or aptly compare them to the Socialist Party. He was nice enough not to mention Justice Sotomayor, for instance, whose watershed ruling concerning discrimination (she favored it), was overturned by the Court while she was in the process of being confirmed.

The only thing better than revising history is revising the present. Ask Formisano. In the meantime, the “Tea Party Gang of Five” rides again!

And so it goes.

Jim Clark

Shameful Presidential Posturing

The president is still busy taking his “victory lap” account the assassination of Osama bin Laden in May2011, something about which he said a few days after the feat was accomplished that there would be no “spiking the ball,” i.e., crowing loud and long concerning “see what I did…hooray!” Now, he’s even taken his act to Afghanistan, a bit of buffoonery in an effort toward reelection but “rubbing the Pakistanis nose in it,” a diplomatic bit of stupidity, just a good photo-op. Predictably, the Taliban responded to his brief visit with a car-bombing, killing seven and wounding 17. He might as well have burned a Koran.

Obama, at least, didn’t fabricate a tale in which he had to run a gauntlet of snipers similar to the huge lie foisted on the public in 2008 by State Secretary Clinton concerning the visit she and daughter Chelsea made to Bosnia in 1996. For that bit of integrity she entered the president’s cabinet. It’s no wonder tax-cheat Geithner became Treasurer and former senator Tom Daschle had to cough up over $100,000 in unpaid taxes in his unsuccessful effort to become secretary of something or other. Dishonesty seemed to be a virtual requirement, and these folks were not the only examples.

One remembers the incident of last May with respect to just how much Obama had (or not) to do with it. The actual account is sure to come out in a book by somebody in this administration either after he’s gone or Obama is gone, whichever comes first, hopefully the latter in November. The account by an “insider” has been well documented on the Internet and includes info relative to just how incompetent Obama is regarding anything military. It seems clear enough that the “Osama Affaire” was then CIA-director Panetta’s baby, with Obama “leading from behind,” if at all.

The assassination effort took place at Osama’s compound just about a half-mile from the Pakistan Military Academy, the equivalent of West Point in this country. The topographical map shows a mere handful of buildings between the two locations. There was a firefight resulting in at least five deaths (including Osama) and a number of wounded. The Navy Seals were on the ground for forty minutes during which time a helicopter crashed sending up a fireball.

The noise alone of three or four (who knows?) helicopters and the firefight, plus the enhanced noise of the crash, could have been heard a mere half-mile away from the West Point of Pakistan in Abbottabad but there was no response from presumably some of the sharpest military operatives in the country, even though the mayhem continued for forty minutes practically on their parade ground? This defies belief, so one has to wonder as to Panetta’s total knowledge and control.

What did Panetta know (plan) and when did he know (plan) it? Was there a conspiracy that included Pakistanis, who are Taliban, not al Qaeda, and who had seen what al Qaeda had caused for being allowed to operate in Afghanistan?

The plan was to secure the body of bin Laden – dead, not captured. Why? He was unarmed so he could have been taken alive or even anesthetized to make his removal easy. After all, he was to be carried out in any case, according to plan. He had more knowledge of al Qaeda plans and operatives than anyone in the world – a veritable gold mine of information to be mined at Gitmo, perhaps with water-boarding, which neither injures nor kills and is therefore not torture.

In its 01 May 2011 (same day?) account, ABC News indicated that sources had reported that DNA testing proved that Osama had been killed. This means that DNA testing was done on the spot, presumably, an impossibility. Has there ever been any information as to where and when Osama’s DNA had been previously collected and preserved by U.S. officials in order for a match to be made, especially immediately?

Osama’s son was killed in the attack but it’s a lead-pipe cinch that his DNA was not collected for a match; however, even if it had been, it could not have been calculated in a 40-minute firefight or within minutes after the attack. Osama was removed immediately and flown to a carrier in the Arabian Sea, where he joined the mermaids or the 72 virgins, whichever came first…all within 24 or so hours, lest Allah be offended. Egad!

So…whereas Iraq’s Saddam was not shot by his American captor but made to stand trial and be publicly hanged, leaving no doubt as to his identity and final disposition, all the public got concerning the May 2011 celebrant, whoever he was, was a bunch of pictures and verbal assurances that he was bin Laden.

American citizens, especially the relatives of those killed on 9/11 and in the fighting in Afghanistan deserved to see bin Laden brought to justice by this country, like Saddam and the German butchers after World War II in Iraq and Holland, respectively. Why not just drown 9/11-planner Khalid in the Atlantic at some unmarked spot instead of giving him the “good life” at Gitmo…same difference?

None of this is to say that bin Laden was not killed on 01 May 2011. It is to say that the peculiarities surrounding the event make the administration’s accounting stink. The interrogation, public trial and execution of Osama would have sent the proper message to terrorists everywhere. Dishonesty concerning Osama is the hallmark of this administration…either that or abject stupidity.

One thing is certain, to wit, Obama should continue his campaigning on the basis of his actual performance and stop trying to con the public, crowing and hoo-hahing about his personal execution of Osama bin Laden. He was just a bystander, like everyone else. Someday, the truth will be known.

And so it goes.

Jim Clark

Only in KENTUCKY!

Most people at one time or another in defining their state will say, “Only in ********!” In Kentucky, strange things happen that make the statement only too true…and sometimes hilarious.

For instance, the lead story on the front page of the “A” section above the fold of the 30 April Lexington Herald-Leader was the earth-shaking news-account that a horse had died (okay, euthanized)…actually a former racehorse. Of course, it was not just any racehorse but a legendary stud, as noted in the sub-head, that sired 130 (count ’em) stakes-winners. The horse, Dynaformer by name, is pictured in the front-page obituary, with the caption noting that his foals earned more than $105 million for their owners.

To have a mare mated to Dynaformer, an owner had to cough up $150,000 this year, but unfortunately the horse suffered an aortic valve rupture a while back and had to be retired at age 27. Considering just the 130 stakes-winners, Dynaformer had been well used by his owners but there’s no telling how many performances of a sexual nature he had accomplished since there were bound to be a lot more stakes-losers than -winners, not to mention a multitude of just ordinary-race-losers. One wonders if PETA knows about this, especially if too much equine sexual activity could cause such a physical malfunction.

The obit also took up one-third of page 2 and noted that Dynaformer had a surly temperament, sometimes playing havoc with his stall-wall…obviously the ruler of the barn. While the owners no doubt feel bad about the loss, such folks as stall-knockers, exercisers and other stable-hands might not feel the same remorse for a horse that ruled with an iron hoof, sometimes planted on an unsuspecting human derriere.

For Dynaformer there will be a memorial service, of course, preceded by a period when folks can pay their respects. All this is noted in the front-page account – time, place, the whole nine yards. Over on page 8 was an account concerning some 20 Christian churchgoers slaughtered in South Africa in an attack similar to previous attacks by an Islamic extremist group called Boko Haram. The folks in that collective obit were wasted by folks on motorcycles, not horses, so they were relegated to the page where few folks go.

Horseracing is a sport, of course, though the horses probably don’t know that; otherwise, they would have declared a day of mourning and maybe even a strike. But Kentucky is sometimes so hung-up on sports that nearly anything is believed possible, such as a university basketball coach who publicly describes his operation as a “one-and-done” proposition, meaning that his shtick is the recruiting of All-American high-school players and practically guaranteeing them that through the good auspices of the University of Kentucky and his unique ability they will make the National Basketball Association after laboring through classes (on a sometime basis, of course) for only one year. Unbelievably, this is true…and he’s about as good as his word.

The coach pulled in something more than $4.5 million in the current salary-cycle, probably six or seven times more than the UK president and ten times more than President Obama, but who’s counting anyway? The coach’s name is more familiar throughout Kentucky (everywhere east of Frankfort, the capital, anyway) than that of the governor. In the long ago there was a rule that freshmen players could not compete in actual games, just practice. There were actually juniors and seniors playing in those days but the old adage “follow the money” rules these days (TV), so sensational raw meat is always needed, the classroom being only incidental.

This makes the universities the minor league for the NBA, as they are for the National Football League, too, for which underclassmen also declare for the draft (just finished) in droves. However, no other basketball coach and certainly no football coaches promise athletes the “promised land” in just one year of suffering through remedial math and English, with maybe soccer 101 and caddying 101 thrown in. Only the very best guards can be abided at a measly 6-5, but the forwards and centers must come in at 6-9 or preferably much taller.

A mention of the governor brings up another sporting subject – gambling or, as the governor prefers, “gaming,” which sounds much more respectable. In this case, the Kentucky guv has tried mightily to install casinos at racetracks in order to “save” the sport, since it can’t stand on its own, and it’s no wonder when it takes $150,000 to manufacture a horse and then feed it 30 lbs. of hay a day, plus nutrients. Of course, the horse may never win a race but may at least become a tax write-off account stud-deficiencies.

Well…the guv may have a point. A loser at the two-dollar (or more) window might make up his losses at blackjack or the slots, and vice versa. Both racing and casinos are sport-operations so why shouldn’t the sky be the limit? Maybe a cock-fighting pit (also a Kentucky sport) could also be installed somewhere out behind the barns.

After all, what’s the difference between horse-doping (a common practice) that injures or kills the beasts and letting chickens kill each other…with the owners in both categories getting well? Chicken has always been table-fare and horsemeat is now also acceptable, so the slaughterhouse provides another market for exploiting the “sports.” This will not be the end for Dynaformer, however, since he’ll be buried in the Stallion Cemetery.

Only in KENTUCKY!

And so it goes.

Jim Clark