Biden Stump-Speech

The following is an imagined stump speech by Vice President Biden before the NAACP in – let’s say – Danville, Virginia, though it could be anywhere. [teleprompter notes included but not often noticed, same as the teleprompter]

Brothers and sisters, it’s great to be back here in North Carolina, where the Panthers are the best baseball team in the U.S. of A., maybe even the world. What I have to say is not fluffernutter, the famous word I used in 2008 to describe every speech by John Edwards, whether it’s in the dictionary or not. I’m everything he would not have been as vice president if Kerry had been elected in 2004, except filthy rich, of course, not that riches are filthy, unless they’re Mitt Romney’s riches…can I get an amen to that? (wait for foot-stomping and cheers)

I’m sure you know I speak with great authority but I’ll just remind you that I stared down Alberto Gonzales, Bush’s attorney general for those who are Yale graduates, (pause for boos) in that famous Senate hearing and said – verbatim – “I’ll be watching you, buddy.” (if no clapping, change Yale to Duke)

You may remember that I was the Judiciary Committee chairman that grilled Uncle Thomas Clarence unmercifully in his nomination hearing and then voted against his appointment to the Supremes (self-deprecating laughter), not the musical group (pause for more laughter and roll eyes) but that bipolar bunch in robes, except for the ladies, o’ course, and maybe Breyer…or is it Rehnquist…or…where the hell’s that…oh, there it is…hahahaha…got off the teleprompter there for a sec.

Yesiree, as we say in Dover, I was actually voting for Anita Hill that day and all women that’ve been stood-up by some stud and we democrats had the majority but the race card caught us…though I haven’t figured out how since they were both…but I digress…back to the big “T.”

Just let me explain what I meant in 2008 when I said the presidency was not an on-the-job-training program for less-than-one-term senators. (look wise and soulful) President Obama was better prepared than even George Washington, who was the wisest democrat ever. I meant my remarks for that idiot from Alaska, Mike Gravel, with his stance on homosexuality being accepted in the military and…uh…well, strike that…I mean…

A lot’s been said about the president’s evolving on the marriage question from “not good” to…well, “not bad"…or “not so bad,” or what’s the big #@%$&*# deal in the first place? (put on your diversity look – big smile – lots of teeth). Two guys wanna get married…look, they’re probably already…you know…sheesh, where’s that #%$&^* teleprompter? Remember when Big Ted went after that Bush nominee for surgeon general – guy named Holsinger? This doctor had written a paper on the dangers of rectal intercourse and still expected to be surgeon general. Big Ted, the most famous democrat ever to drown a car, didn’t even let the nomination get out of committee. That’s what the party and the president stand for – diversity and never mind that silly law Bill Clinton signed, the Defense of Marriage Act. Barack has said it’s unconstitutional and he knows ’cause he’s a constitutional scholar. Just ask ’im yourself.

And about that five-letter-word “chains” I mentioned a few days ago. (don’t stop here, no matter how loud the boos) I didn’t mean any reference to you-know-what in the you-know-where with the you-know-who in the you-know-when. Sheesh…who did this teleprompter? I may have to try that again. Anyway, the chains I meant were the ones on the front-porch swing, where Romney brags that everyone will take it easy, pay less taxes and have it good when he’s elected. Instead of chains, I should’ve said something about soup lines…that’s where y’all will be. (pause for o-o-h-ing and a-a-h-ing) This administration’s kept the unemployment rate down to somewhere around a measly 8.5 percent and the unemployment/welfare rate ’way up, just like Barack promised it would be. So…just like that old Gershwin song had it, “What could ask for anything more?” Hey, you folk got it chicken-lickin’ good.

Now let me explain what the president meant when he said in that speech of superb eloquence that entrepreneurs couldn’t hack it without the government. (pause while people wake up) He didn’t mean they weren’t smart or didn’t work hard enough…he just meant that…that…where’s that #%$@^*# teleprompter again…he just meant…oh well, that’s no #%$^&#&# big deal anyway. Everybody knows that the entitlement crowd’s figured out the best deal in town…just sign the papers and let the good times roll. Y’all got Barack to thank for that, so truck on down to the ballot box and show your appreciation. In the meantime, don’t let any o’ those strange folks in the Convenient stores – you can tell by that Indian accent – rob ya blind on the food stamps.

Back in 2007…or 2008…somewhere in there in that diner, I made it plain that Barack was articulate, clean, bright, nice looking and a storybook. In other words, brothers and sisters, I made him what he is and I’m proud o’ that. It’s like when FDR went on TV in thirty-nine and said Churchill was a great man, and look who won the war to end all wars…or at least some war…what happened to that #@&%^$* teleprompter again?

Finally, to let you know my heart’s in the right place, I’ll just mention that Dr. Jill and I gave seven dollars a week to charity from 1998 to 2007. It was right there on the tax returns we released – seven whole dollars in that three-letter word week for ten years. What I’m sayin’ is that you folk can throw in more than just change to the campaign and I’ll close by sayin’ God love y’all…even if ya can’t stand.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

POTUS, Jekyll & Hyde

It’s just past one a.m. in the little room off the Oval Office and Dr. Jekyll and his alter ego Mr. Hyde are meeting with POTUS and his press czar, Jay Carney, hereinafter referenced as J, H, P, and C, respectively, if not necessarily respectfully.

**P: Now that we’re…

**J: I say, Edward, do you suppose this upstart colonist never learns?

**P: Oh…I forgot, Henry. (turning to Carney) Step into the Oval Office, Jay, and get it ready. Remember, these guys threatened to leave in January if we met in this…

**H: Ah yes…this den of iniquity as so desecrated by the your Slick William and the intern. I say, did William ever get around to shutting her up for good…maybe a strangulation with one of the strings from the piano in the East Room…eyes bulging, Hillary wondering at the noise…

**J: Edward…really! (turns to P) He watched another rerun of the Godfather on the plane and…but what he actually means is that a president should exert strict discipline, especially on feisty interns. (Carney returns and they leave for the Oval Office)

**H: Egad, Henry, do I see Styrofoam cups again…and no tea, not that we appreciate being reminded of tea anyway…that Boston Harbor uprising among the peasants, and now that dreadful tea party. But we were right in January about there being no American Spring…right Barry?

**P: You were right and we made it through the Operation Wall Street uprising…

**J: Barry, we are not guys. That sounds so…well, thuggish. We’re gentlemen of the highest water and…by the way, if we don’t see some porcelain in the next five minutes…

**P: Sorry about that Henry. I just forgot…awful tough game of golf today…shot a 109 but, of course, a 75 for the newspapers. Jay, go below and get a ration of grog and some crumpets and…

**C: I’ll try, commander-in-chief, but I think the galley crew has gone on liberty.

**H: Grog, crumpets and he calls you c-in-c, Barry! He was doing that in January, too. Do you plan to engage the presidential yacht in broadsides at the republicans?

**P: It’s navy-month again, Edward, like it was in January. Each service is used once every four months for lingo and whatever else applies. I’m trying to learn something about the military in this election year. Jay doesn’t call me c-in-c in public but everyone does in private. It builds my confidence. The Joint Chiefs Chairman doesn’t like it but he follows orders.

**J: Confidence my John Bull lapel pin, Barry! Hahahahaha…it feeds your ego.

**H: Since it’s navy month you might keelhaul the JCC, Barry…right out there in the Potomac! Pipe all hands to the Rose Garden and…

**J: Really, Edward! He just means that you’re doing your job well when you make examples of the crew, Barry. But…keelhaul…I think not, Barry. The peasants might arise.

**H: I got it, Barry – water-board the bloke down at the CIA Farm. Nobody will know. I’d like to watch.

**J: Stop it, Edward. Since Barry sent the bust of Churchill back to the queen on his first day in office the CIA hasn’t liked us, or the FBI, or the DEA, or maybe even the NEA. (Carney returns with some libations and cookies)

**C: Sorry about the mismatched cups, Commander-in-Chief, but the galley gang was gone and these doughnuts were all I could find.

**H: The recession is worse than I thought, Henry. Imagine serving doughnuts to guests! And these look as if they’ve been in a corn-hole game, at that. I’ll take a pass, Jay, and guard against gastric upsets…you know, Washington’s revenge, oh hahahahaha…

**J: I say, Barry, just why did you invite us this time, not that I don’t know, of course, because we’re always right.

**P: I need advice for my campaign. Romney’s just picked this Ryan guy as his running mate and Ryan knows more about economics than even the Treasury secretary.

**J: Which is to say that by comparison you don’t know a treasury bill from a gas bill, Barry. That must be why you’re dodging the jobs issue by telling all the old codgers Ryan means to let them die so they’ll be scared into voting for old Moneybags Barry and keep their Medicare…

**H: Which you’ve already cut by hundreds of billions, Barry, and Ryan will out you for that and make the old folks dissolve into weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth. You need to get a special ops bloke to off Ryan and – VOILA – problem solved…old AK-47 to the rescue.

**J: What Edward means, of course, Barry, is that Ryan must simply be neutralized, you know…Chicago style. Dig up some dirt.

**C: Uh…uh…uh…uh…

**J: Mr. Carney, I’ve watched your press conferences and you use that term quite often. What precisely does it mean?

**C: Well…uh, that is…I mean…Ryan’s as clean as a hounds tooth, as we say in…as we say in…

**P: Jay means we’ve tried for months to dig up dirt on Ryan and can’t find anything.

**H: Can’t find anything? Can’t find any dirt on a politician…any politician? Impossible!

**J: Well then, Barry, you’ll just have to borrow one of those Hollywood screenwriters who love you so much and tell him to write up some solid dirt on Ryan, then put it on the teleprompter and…

**H: I know just the subject, Barry. Tie him to that girl who’s been campaigning with you. What’s her name? I remember, it’s Fluke, the girl whose friends are all losing their significant others because they can’t afford enough condoms to keep them and their guys happy, something you think should be fixed, maybe by your healthcare bill. O-o-o-o-oh…the scandal…

**J: Why yes, Edward. You’re right. She told all those people in the hearing in Congress that the poor girls were unable to keep their minds on their subjects…a sort of mental illness caused by condom-denial…post-condom-traumatic-stress-disorder.

**H: Then you can become the tough condommander-in-chief and arm the ladies with…oh hahahahaha…

**P: How does that sound, Jay? Can you handle that in a press conference?

**C: Uh…uh…uh…uh…

**J: Come, Edward, let us leave. I’ve never been able to stand it for very long in the colonies.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Obama & Character Assassination

The sure sign of intuiting an impending doom in a political campaign occurs when the campaigner, instead of either discussing substance or protecting a record in the case of incumbency, resorts to attempting to assassinate the character of his opponent…sort of like hating the message and therefore killing the messenger. Whether he or his apparatchiks commit the slander, he must take the responsibility for the sleazy methodology.

President Obama has taken pains to make it clear that he functions as Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, notwithstanding his obvious ignorance with respect to anything military. Like former prexy Clinton, he probably “loathes” the military and is reminded of that loathing every time he approaches his personal helicopter or makes one of his near-daily trips on Air Force One for transportation somewhere to make yet another campaign speech – all those uniforms and all that silly saluting. Now, however, he has a new appellation, to wit, “Liar-in-Chief.”

One of the president’s prime campaign-slanderer-sycophants is Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who may not genuflect in the dear leader’s presence, as Obama did before the Saudi Arabian honcho in 2009, but comes close. Reid, without a scintilla of proof or the naming of any sources, has recently declared that “the word is out” that Romney has paid no taxes for ten years, despite the fact that his 2010 return was published (paid more than $3 million in income taxes), with the 2011 return to be published as soon as it’s filed, not that it matters. Romney has indicated that it will be about the same.

The enormity of this lie is seen in the fact that in the last ten years Romney was either Massachusetts governor or running for the presidency in 2008. If he hadn’t been paying taxes, that fact would have been trotted out long ago, and certainly in the past decade. Reid, during whose current tenure no budget has been passed in more than a thousand days, undoubtedly at the president’s bidding, is a pathetic if not psychopathic liar, besides which his legislative ability wallows in profound incompetence.

Neither Reid, Minority Leader Pelosi nor Democrat National Committee Chairperson/Florida Congressperson Schultz have allowed their tax returns to be published but are either too stupid to understand their hypocrisy or, as they charge Romney, “have something to hide,” such as offshore accounts not susceptible to taxation. Theirs is a brazen, callous position perpetrated in their elitist belief that the average citizen is too dumb to notice. The scary thing is…they may be right.

The latest ad festering out of the Obama crowd accuses Romney, as Bain Capital’s CEO, of killing someone’s wife because she died of cancer absent any health insurance. When she became ill, Romney was no longer running Bain and when she died he hadn’t run the company for many years, besides which it turns out that she had insurance for two years before her death. The Obama campaign knows all this but the ad airs anyway – a complete and total fabrication from the Liar-in-Chief, who wallows in this slimy ooze, like a pig slopping garbage, perhaps his way of celebrating Ramadan, currently in progress. The woman’s husband was the star of the TV-ad, but no mention has been made of how much he was paid for dancing on his wife’s grave.

Even later is the information oozing out now from the democrat propaganda machine known as the Huffington Post that Romney started his business with money made available by El Salvadoran “families” that used “death squads” in their business dealings. Again, no names have been offered as providing the proof of this, though it could well have happened since it isn’t hard to believe that businesses in Latin America in the 1980s did just that. Until Obama or his minions furnish concrete proof that Romney had knowledge of such a thing, POTUS remains Liar-in-Chief.

As for life and death issues, Obama voted affirmatively in the 1997 Illinois legislature for partial-birth abortions, the actual murder of newborns since they are partly out of the womb when dispatched, then jerked out like a bad appendix and thrown away. He may actually have voted “present,” as was his custom, but since a yes vote would have protected the infant he voted to kill the baby. In other words, he comprised a “death squad” of one, placing him on a par with the wicked El Salvadorans.

POTUS was campaigning in Colorado the other day – on the theme of “Romney’s war against women” – with Sandra Fluke…yeah, THAT Sandra, who testified before a Congressional panel set up by Minority Leader Pelosi a while back to the effect that the women law students at her school (Georgetown…Catholic…no insurance to cover the passion-pit activity) simply could not afford enough condoms (costing $1,000 per year) to satisfy their sexual habits. The Big-Box stores sell them for $9.00 a month but apparently the elite students would only accept the exotic ones…maybe lubricated with WD-40 and spirits of caviar.

Romney’s war against women! Yeah…Liar-in-Chief rides again.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

DNC Memorandum #10

From the office of the ChairWOMAN, 04 August 2012

**LISTEN UP! In case you’re whining about no memorandum since May, forget it! Stuff it! I’ve been busy sabotaging the House, offering advice to POTUS, and taking trips to resort areas in view of upcoming DNC conclaves. POTUS has said that people should be spending more than a drunken sailor, the better to get the economy rolling, but has not authorized free whiskey at Walmarts, as has been claimed. A program is now in the works for the exchange of old energy-guzzling clunker-refrigerators/stoves/AC-units for new solar-paneled ones, with $2,000 available for each transaction. This might make a problem on cloudy days but POTUS has said all spoiled food will be replaced and that patriotic people should not care anyway…the same for paying up to 90% of income in taxes.

**Do not – repeat, DO NOT – ever mention the POTUS masterpiece Dreams from My Father during the campaign since researchers have not yet found any actionable (good CIA term) dirt on Romney, other than that his wife rides horses, a blatant abuse of the creatures, whom Head Czar Sunstein and PETA insist should be entitled to legal services. POTUS went to some trouble to describe in the book his heavy use of alcohol and other drugs. That was a selling point for the youth vote in 2008, but it’s passé now since old codgers, who frown on such stuff, outnumber young voters, who are mad because, not finding employment anywhere but fast-foods, they’ve been forced to move back in on their parents, who in most cases will not ante up for the mary jane. Also, POTUS’s old girl-friends (okay…roommates, partners…whatever) have come out of the woodwork (imagine love letters, too) and fornication is still frowned on by old Baptists in the South who don’t know how to have fun. So…stay off the personal stuff. Romney’s folks will be digging anyway, so don’t do them any favors.

**Since Memorandum #8, there has been a request from the White House for research on the god that SCOTUS Justice Thomas worships. It was noted in a West Virginia speech by the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright (forget that God damn America stuff), who never tells a lie, that Thomas, who says he is a Catholic, worships another god, but didn’t say which one, though it most likely is not the Rev. Dr. Imam Ayatollah Louis Farrakhan…so don’t go there. I want on my desk a red/yellow/black/white paper entitled Justice Thomas’s Paganism no later than 15 August concluding this subject. For Harvard Law grads, names like Buddha, Confucius, Zen, Obamessiah (little joke there) might ring a bell. Since diversity is a sacred tenet of the DNC, Great White Father might be another place not to go, not even on the Reservations, where casinos, not heaven, are considered the Happy Hunting Ground.

**Do not make a big deal out of the Chick-fil-A protests. Mayor Rahm Emanuel agreed to make the White House noise on this issue by inviting this restaurant never to come to Chicago, which has a stockyard rather than a henhouse history, though that had nothing to do with homosexuals marrying each other. The whole thing backfired, with the restaurant having its best day ever after Huckabee’s declaration of 01 August as Normal Marriage Day. The staffer who sent Emanuel a dead fish will be disciplined. The DNC’s position on marriage is simply that people can marry anything they like – male, female, work, Old Granddad-100-proof. POTUS may enlarge the privilege if elected, so choose your spots regarding the kinky town-halls held in bars or houses of ill-repute, and strip-joints. Head Czar Sunstein insists that he never said the neighbor’s dog qualifies and that he won’t mention it again, even as he returns to Harvard Law, where the POTUS transcript, LST and GPA have been locked away forever.

**Senator Reid has requested the DNC to find the person who he said told him that Romney has paid no taxes for ten years, except maybe the last two, since he has presented the return for 2010 (paid a paltry $3 million income tax and gave away a bit more than that) and is about to deliver the 2011 return. Attorney General Holder is said to be in the process of suing Romney for the ten years and maybe sending him to the pokey but hasn’t figured out a way of explaining why Romney isn’t already in jail or at least having his income garnisheed a la Willie Nelson. Do NOT – repeat – DO NOT mention Reid’s ties to the mob in Nevada, not that that’s unusual, just not attractive in an election year. Mob money is as good as anyone else’s so cultivate mobsters when in Nevada or on the Reservations…they’re our kind of people.

**POTUS has requested that the DNC set up a liaison office with NYC Mayor Bloomberg’s office for the purpose of synchronizing efforts to prohibit hospitals from allowing formula in maternity areas, with the out-year goal of enacting laws requiring only breast-feeding for the first six months of a baby’s life. This will necessitate setting up “latching-areas” in all establishments, including but not limited to houses of the rising sun, the military (including combat zones), coal mines and offshore drilling rigs. The goal is equal-opportunity-breastfeeding, thus establishing a super-race, though that term is not to be used…too reminiscent of Hitler’s thousand-year Third Reich that lasted ten years.

**POTUS has expressed an interest in either the complete rewriting of the Constitution or at least that part that limits a president to only two terms. He has already made the case that the document doesn’t even provide for distribution and redistribution and even re-redistribution of wealth. Those on the receiving end of redistribution and especially re-redistribution are said to be in the majority now, meaning that they can – or soon will be able to – outvote the fools who work for wages not calculated by the government, in the first place. The DNC has been charged with making this case, though in an election year I haven’t the time to oversee it since my second-job in the House requires a vote occasionally, not that it means anything since the repubs run the place. Former Bill Clinton-genius James Carville has agreed to head up this project but will need help in transforming his Louisiana language into English. Caution: Do not utter the word “Snakehead” while in his presence.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

BIG BROTHER Rides Again!

Not long ago, New York City Mayor/Billionaire Bloomberg decided that people need to be told how to live longer, be healthier, be happier, probably, and be all around free from everything bad, which will, of course, make every city and town free from everything bad. The mayor has already decided that people in the Big Apple eat too much salt and has taken steps to stop that bad habit. Restaurants…look out, since even Bloomberg hasn’t yet figured out how to monitor salt intake in residential kitchens and dining rooms!

Bloomberg has come up with a plan to engage the cities by offering millions in awards to cities that come up with the best ideas regarding how to establish Utopia. Most ideas about anything are worthless, of course, because they conflict with other ideas, but maybe the mayor is on to something…a sort of Idea Commission that will settle the matter of how to make everything perfect.

Actually, the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture (or some such agency) has already started the ball rolling on the federal level. Probably the “idea” came from Head Czar Sunstein and involves school-lunch examiners/regulators whose job is to make spot-checks in schools and make on-the-spot corrections when it’s discovered that some mom has erred grievously in the preparation of her child’s lunch.

The recent North Carolina case comes to mind. The federal examiner pronounced a private lunch unfit (had only fruit and stuff like that) and mandated that the child eat three (count ’em) chicken fingers in order for her life not to be threatened by a lack of white meat. It happened…you can’t make up this stuff. It’s part of Obama’s CHANGE, like the skyrocketing electricity rates he promised.

This matter was taken seriously by columnist Tom Eblen of the Lexington [Ky.] Herald-Leader, who gave this as his suggestion on 27 July: “Set a goal to make Lexington the nation's healthiest city through better nutrition and more exercise.” How’s that for originality? Actually, cities usually neither eat nor do aerobics but…okay…that’s semantic nitpicking gone amok, totally unfair.

Eating salads and at least walking a proper distance every day are nothing new. As far as the health conditions of the people of Lexington are concerned, Eblen could have suggested that all trucks be kept off city streets because they fill the air with multi-carcinogens. Ditto for those diesel-fumes-emitting locomotives that thunder through town. Naw, the H-L will opt instead for a smoke-free outdoors – no tobacco fumes, never mind that all the smokers in Lexington in their entire lifetimes could not put as much carcinogens in the air as the trucks and trains do in one hour.

The Bloomberg lunacy is reflective of the “Big Brother” philosophy that drives the nation now – both political parties sharing the blame. Bloomberg’s latest dreamed-up “regulation” is that hospitals should deny formula to babies whose mothers take a dim view of breast-feeding. Okay, the experts say that breast-feeding is best, but it’s sometimes hard to do on the job. Rosie the Riveter (not to mention her baby) might find breast-feeding disconcerting. One wonders when groceries in NYC will have to sell formula on the black market.

Mayors do have responsibilities in keeping their cities safe, however, as seen in Chicago Mayor Emanuel’s assertion the other day that Chic-fil-A should have no restaurants in the Windy City because that outfit doesn’t observe Chicago’s VALUES. This is the mayor of the current U.S. murder-capital, who suggested to the gang-bangers recently that they shoot each other in the alleys and not on the streets, lest innocent children be caught in the cross-fire. Now…that’s a real VALUE! Perhaps Rahm should invite back Barack, his old boss and fellow Chicagoan, to organize the community, his specialty.

One supposes that Chic-fil-A could be dangerous in Lexington, given that, as Eblen noted, Lexingtonians are among the most sedentary, non-exercising, and therefore unhealthiest people in the country. He doubtlessly views fried chicken as a lethal force, though one suspects it might be dangerous only if one of the thousands of couch-potatoes should partake of 50 grilled-chicken sandwiches in a single sitting.

The point is moot, however, since the rap on Chik-fil-A is operative not because of its food but because its CEO claimed that marriage (actually the only possible arrangement) should be between a man and woman, as so states the laws and/or constitutions of most of the states, including the federal government. The president has stated that neither he nor the attorney general will enforce that law, an impeachable offense, but Obamessiah has declared that government by executive order trumps all else, except perhaps the directives of his chief adviser, Valerie Jarrett, who finally – after some prodding by sane people – let him “do” Osama.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

University Lunacy

The University of Louisville, a part of the tax-supported Kentucky system of higher education, is planning to build an “academic center” to serve its athletes. Located in the football stadium, it will be called the Academic Center of Excellence. The cost: a cool $8 million.

With the country in what seems now to be an irreversible recession and with tuition- and board- rates out the ceiling, the university intends to blow $8 million on a facility, which by any measure is totally unnecessary. It will have tutorial areas, labs, offices, and classrooms. These features are already on campus, just as in the case of every university.

Apparently, the facility will not have a library, so the athletes will be forced to use the existing campus library, an imposition of inordinate proportions, or simply take classes that do not require visits to the books and other resources. One might imagine a curriculum featuring volley-ball rules 101 or a top-tier course such as advanced concussion methods 501.

Meanwhile, back at the University of Kentucky, which has been busy laying off more than a hundred folks, the new basketball players dormitory is about ready for occupancy. The other one was getting old (something over 30 years). The new one cost a mere $7 million, said to be donated by a coal-mining outfit, but, of course, one always wonders about what has been said and what has been done as well as all the strings attached.

Academics have always been a problem for the schools since the athletic teams are successful or not on the basis of just the athletic ability of the players. High schools and prep schools are constantly under intensive investigation by the highly paid recruiters, euphemistically called assistant coaches of something or other, in order to attract the best physical specimens. This often means trying to wedge the athlete past the academic eligibility rules, especially since high schools are notorious for simply “grinding out” athletes, whether they can add two and two or not.

During the entire 2010-11 basketball season, the athletic director and basketball coach at the University of Kentucky tried to persuade the NCAA, governing body of all higher education sports, to approve a 6-11 basketball player from Turkey, who had played professionally (for [gasp] money) in Europe and just might help UK win out in the Final Four. This made him a professional instead of an amateur (supposedly not allowed) but that didn’t deter the UK jock-department, which, finally, was unsuccessful. The team didn’t make the Final Four.

The UL and UK things do not place these institutions in a class of slimy sports-stuff by themselves. This sleazy approach to sports is endemic throughout the country, something everyone knows. The money-under-the-table, illicit gifts, and recruiting hanky-panky goes on all the time but the trick is to not get caught.

College and university sports have never been “clean,” but the dirt is now more pronounced than ever because of the unbelievable amounts of money involved. As in the case of a lot of other corrupted things, the main culprit is television. The schools rake in huge amounts when their games are televised, the marketplace defining the action. This means that every effort, above board or not, must be made by the schools to win at all costs because TV chooses the teams/games.

Sports conferences try to even the odds for every school by establishing the distribution of the “pot,” but can do just so much. Winning is everything and this is why schools pay athletic apparatchiks, especially coaches (recruiters), millions in salaries and/or perks. For instance, the basketball coach at UK is worth close to $4 million a year, football assistants well past the $225,000 mark.

That coach’s shtick, well publicized by him and the university, is that he will prepare an incoming student for the National Basketball Association in just one year. Academics has nothing to do with it, though the players are encouraged to go to class and, perhaps with few exceptions, take courses that today’s eighth-grader could probably handle quite well. The coach does this through recruiting players that probably are already good enough for the pros, a la LeBron James, but the university experience makes them draft eligible – worth millions just in signing bonuses alone.

The UL academic center’s purpose probably is to simply keep the players eligible somehow, and how better than to isolate them from the rest of the school’s community, which is designed for the advancement of academics, something far too demanding of his time for an athlete whose future and especially that of his coaches depends on winning games, not earning grades. The modern athlete is on a 24/7 schedule at the top universities, sports-wise. It’s a rotten system that effectively forecloses scholarships for deserving students academically and awards them to athletes.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Potpourri

**The president has now made it to Aurora, Colorado, to visit the wounded and bereaved in connection with the theater murders last week. At least he didn’t turn the visit into a campaign rally, as he did in January 2011 at the memorial service near Tucson, Arizona, in connection with the shooting of Congresswoman Giffords. If he had attended the “prayer vigil” in Aurora, that’s what would have happened. He is now griever-in-chief.

Obama showed great compassion for the folks in Aurora and Tucson but one wonders how he feels about visiting the families in Libya who lost loved ones in 2011 when, simply by executive order (or the equivalent) and for no discernible reason, he commanded decent U.S. GIs to drop bombs and missiles on that country in March, then went on vacation and announced his military prowess in Brazil. His assault lasted for seven months under the guise of a NATO operation. Perhaps he should consider such a visit in light of what it might do for his current campaign.

Or, he might try to further meddle in Syria, where President Assad has made it plain that WMD will be used to defend against any attacking force from outside. He’s already said that Assad has to go, thus empowering insurgents (whoever they are – no one seems to know) on the basis of U.S. weaponry help, which will not be forthcoming. Even Obama knows better than that. Meanwhile, Israel has taken responsibility for seeing that the WMD does not fall into the wrong hands. A nice new war, anyone?

**The bloodiest day this year has just happened in Iraq, where folks have chosen-up sides and are having the civil war that they wanted long ago, with the U.S. standing in the way by its very presence there. It’s not a civil war actually but more of a religious clash as the Shiites (majority) and Sunnis (minority) have at it.

It’s Ramadan-time and what better way to celebrate this religious observance than by Muslim killing Muslim? They must fast during the day but there’s nothing wrong with making mincemeat of each other day or night. Have a good meal at sunset while discussing the day’s body-count, then have a nightly crusade to equal the score. What a religion…surely something to die for (and take a few women and children in the process)!

**As usual, especially because of the weirdness of the media, Americans seem to be having a hard time facing the issue (or is it a problem) with death. Summers can be so dull without some morbid titillation. There was the summer of 1995, when the O.J. Simpson murder fiasco of a trial happened in Los Angeles, with the TV crowd as audience and the judge manipulating his hourglasses. More recently, it seemed that the accounts of the Cayley Anthony murder-trial and attendant happenings in Florida would go on forever.

Now, the Zimmerman/Martin case is front and center in Florida, with a new tidbit every day for months coming from the media. The media is playing Aurora for all it’s worth, parading everyone who wants a bit of fame before the cameras. This will go on and on, with the usual subjects emanating from the “anchors” about gun-control, mental disorders, suggestive movies and all the rest. Cable has made “news” available 24/7, so news has to be generated to fill such a time-quota. One longs for the days of Huntley/Brinkley, when news was reported in a short time-frame and the networks moved on. Now, experts without any actual knowledge of a happening are grilled continuously and speculate all over the place.

The strangest thing happened with ABC – that Stephanopoulos/Ross thing in which these two TV worthies suggested strongly that the Aurora butcher was a member of the Tea Party (he wasn’t) and therefore perfectly capable of such a heinous crime. The transparency of this political gimmick is amazing but perhaps no more so than CBS’s Dan Rather’s unsuccessful attempt through outright lies to discredit George Bush in 2004 and help John Kerry. Michael Isikoff, writing for NewsWeek reported in 2010 that Korans had been flushed at Gitmo (they weren’t), thus setting off 15 killings in Afghanistan. He reports now for NBC, as a reward, surely, and can be seen nightly, lately from Penn State environs.

**The idiocy/corruption connected with sports on any level has been seen lately in the Penn State/NCAA affair. The Penn State officials (all, including the knowledgeable trustees) involved were on about a par with the Catholic bishops/cardinals in precisely similar circumstances, but the athletes and various athletic programs, who/which had nothing to do with the lurid Sandusky- pedophilia atrocities, are paying the price. This is nothing like the SMU affair two decades or so ago, in which NCAA rules had been violated.

The whole mess is a criminal/civil matter, not an athletic one, though corruption drives the total sports-scene, anyway. This is seen in the Olympics about to start in London – athletes from everywhere, some professional, some amateur, no telling how many on drugs, and all the rest, including the judges, who can rig anything for whatever purpose.

And so it goes in the hot, hot summertime.
Jim Clark

Governments Buried by Pensions & Perks

For some strange reason, little is said these days about union/government corruption as governments on all levels are strained for cash – some even declaring bankruptcy – and consequently engage in cutting services or raising taxes, the latter currently a distinct no-no. This is especially true for state and local governments, many if not most of which took the “glorious” stimulus money meant to create jobs and used it instead to continue the cash-flow connected to governance…writing the checks.


Warning Caveat: This writer was a member for many years of a trade-union in his job as a railroader, mostly as a locomotive engineer. In the process, he saw both management and labor at their best and worst, neither superior to the other in either case. He retired at age 62 and draws a consequently reduced pension comprised of the social security tier enhanced by a “tier-two” arrangement bought and paid for by both the railroad and the employee. The pension is modest by any measure.

No government should ever be connected in any way to trade-unions, i.e., it should hire no employees represented by a union and should never be forced to negotiate anything other than workplace conditions, and only then through a lawfully established commission with both government and employees equally represented and governed ultimately by the appropriate state and federal laws.

This may sound strange coming from a union guy. The reason it isn’t strange is that the union guy worked for an employer that had to compete for business and show a profit to stockholders in order to stay in business, while a government employee works for an organization that competes for nothing, never has to show a profit, and has pockets made deep through virtually unlimited taxation dollars, not competitive success.

The prime case in point currently is that of impending governmental bankruptcies account being unable to fund pension plans negotiated with unions and producing agreements that are outrageous by any standard. The prime example of a governor and legislature actually doing something about this problem occurred recently in Wisconsin when government-employed union workers were made to join the country, i.e., pay through the nose like everyone else for perks like medical insurance and pension benefits, not least because on average they made far more than private-sector workers and could afford paying their “fair share,” as the prez might have it.

Wisconsin, like most other states as well as the railroads and other industries, until the last 25 or so years dealt with workers on the basis of “contracts” negotiated when technology was more primitive and when unions provided an element of protection for workers, who could be mistreated upon a managerial whim. Such is not the case today.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 11.8% of the work-force is unionized. Only 6.9% of workers (7.2 million) in the private sector are unionized, while 37% of public workers (7.6 million) are unionized. Therein lies the rub. Legislators and other elected officials (translated vote-seekers) have virtually given away the store to government employees, using tax dollars, while private-industry workers must negotiate settlements with the company’s bottom line as a critical issue.

According to the BLS, government workers on all levels in 2011 averaged earning $938 per week, a whopping 29% more than private-sector workers who averaged $729. This is unconscionable and the unfairness is obvious. Even more outrageous is the fact that in many if not most states, government employees can retire on full pensions in their early 50s while private-sector employees must stay in the saddle past age 65 just to get full social security benefits. Schoolteachers, for instance, who face no physical problems in their employment, can retire after 25 years while a railroader is still pounding the ballast and doing manual labor at age 65, after 44 years of service.

It’s impossible to pay people from age 50 to age 80 (average age of women at death) a full pension for doing absolutely nothing – more years doing nothing than the total number of years at work. According to the Lexington Herald-Leader of 04 July 2010, “Most state employees hired before 2008 can retire after 27 years [a teacher at age 49] and collect a pension based on an average of their best-paid years of service. For instance, a worker who earned $50,000 a year would draw an annual pension of $27,000 for the rest of her life, plus cost of living increases. Workers who perform “hazardous duties,” such as police officers, can retire after 20 years [early age-40s].” The next step is a brand-new occupation to work out another pension.

In 1981, the government-paid air-traffic controllers decided to strike, against the advice of their union leaders and even though they had signed contracts – same as the military – disallowing strikes. President Reagan fired them and hired a new bunch without a hitch. The controllers still have a union, but its members know where the line in the sand is.

Every level of government should now be in the process of completely revamping its personnel practices, with or without union cooperation, and notwithstanding all previous agreements. Government workers are not a privileged class, just as private-sector workers are not. This will do no harm to the pension-process, but will simply put it on a footing the taxpayers can afford.

The worker-unions bear much of the responsibility for the current fiasco. Their lobbyists bought the lawmakers or coerced them through threatening to withdraw support. Lawmakers and other elected officials bear most of the blame, however, because they “USED” workers to do the legwork in their campaigns and paid them with money coerced from the citizenry. Disgusting!

Of even more import is the fact that public-sector unions such as the NEA and SEIU, besides having unlimited access to the current White House, can contractually force mediocrity as the common denominator in the matter of performance. This is especially hurtful regarding the teacher unions.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Parking-Lots & Memories

My wife doesn’t drive (a car) and I despise shopping, avoiding stores – maybe just the crowds – at all costs, so I spend a good deal of time in parking lots while she does the shopping. Stores frustrate me, anyway, because no matter how many times I walk past what I’m looking for I don’t see it and ultimately have to ask for help, which I should have done in the first place. Out in the freedom of the parking-lot, I mostly read, with musical accompaniment via a CD, but sometimes go for parking-lot walks or maybe even do a bit of people-watching. Sessions in parking-lots at locations of doctors and hospitals widen the range for people-watching to include even more people-predicaments to observe…crutches, wheel-chairs, canes – lots of old codgers, like me.

Frankly, parking-lots have always been a sort of anathema. I grew up in a small town in the 1930s, when even in the cities parking-lots were unusual, at least to any great extent since there were no shopping centers or malls. There were no grocery carts, either, no check-out lines, no multitude of plastic bags (when a couple would do even then, to say nothing about now) and no waiting around. My parents simply told the clerk what was needed and the clerk did the rest, retrieving the items, totaling the cost and “charging it” or actually making change without the good services of a computer, and then bagging the purchases.

In the small nearby city, there was at least one parking garage in the middle of the business-district, and it was fun to listen to the gear-shifting and screaming (bias) tires as the attendant headed around the sharp curves toward the upper floors and, later, headed down. No driver was allowed to park his own car.

The bags in all stores were made of heavy brown paper in the 30s and in the grocery-stores (so-called then instead of just groceries) were carefully packed to full capacity. There was an art to it, with canned goods at the bottom and lighter things above them. Admittedly, a heavily loaded paper bag was harder to handle than today’s plastic bags with handles, especially for a youngster, and in even a slight rain could become quite problematic, absolutely disastrous in a heavier downpour.

The live chickens on the floor in the rear of the store, with their incessant cackling, were a constant bother and an absolute horror when purchased, even though their legs were tied together. Carrying them by their scratchy, scaly legs, with their heads dragging the floor but terrorizing with the constant threat of a good pecking, was a task to be shoved off on an unsuspecting sibling. Freezing-compartments were reserved almost exclusively for things like ice cream. Frozen food was virtually unthinkable, much less available.

Other refrigeration was mostly for dairy products and meats, although some meat products were hung from the ceiling, already preserved – at least for a time. When a parent paid the butcher, the small son expected a wiener, to be consumed on the spot, never mind if the flies had tasted it first. Meat was not removed by the customer from a freezer but sliced by a butcher and wrapped in white heavy paper, often blood-soaked by the time its contents were ready for cooking.

Parking was almost exclusively on-street, sometimes parallel, other times diagonal. There was even one time in my town when the cars were parked in the middle of Main Street. All transportation of goods was accomplished on a two-footed basis, with the distance from store to auto always a factor. Some folks would drive to town early on a Saturday morning, park the car in the best available spot for all enterprises and just leave it there, working in and out of it as the hours went by.

Without TV and the plethora of little leagues and other distractions, “going to town” was a big deal anytime but especially on Saturday. Men even wore ties and coats and ladies managed to look almost as “right” as on Sunday. For a small boy, a trip to the barbershop could take hours of fidgeting since a lot of men (especially begrimed railroaders) would go for a shampoo, straight-razor shave, haircut, shoe-shine, and all-around conversation, of which there was a great deal during the Great Depression. Besides the pleasing aroma of after-shave/shoe-polish, the air was full of tobacco smoke but nobody thought anything about it. Barbers and clients alike were careful not to swear in front of small boys.

Yeah…parking-lots trigger memories of a much simpler time, even though my birth year of 1930 was only 12 years beyond the end of the “Great War” and catastrophic flu epidemic of 1918. All of the old ways had to go if only because of the demographics. Today’s U.S. population of 314 million is 155%, more than two-and-a-half-times, that of the population of 1930. Kentucky’s has grown by 69% to 4.4 million. The average expected life span at birth in 1930 was 59 years and in 2012 is about 78 (women – 80) and counting upward.

The constant advancement of technology has made the changes between the 1930s and 2012 almost unbelievable. The result: huge big-box stores in which buyers must find the products, just swipe a card to pay for them and cart them out to acres of parking lots. Somehow, I miss the 30s, though not the grocery-store chickens of the Great Depression, a reprise of which might be just around the corner (Depression, not the chickens).

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Ignorance & Officialdom

One supposes that elected officials would at least part of the time show a degree of intelligence that would qualify them for the jobs. However, it seems to be endemic to democracies that they must suffer through IQ downtimes, with no particular reference to political parties. There’s enough ignorance to go around. Nor are the voters who elect their representatives free from ignorance, though they may just be guilty of apathy, i.e., voting without attempting to vet the wannabe reps.


Take the case of State Secretary Clinton, who is rambling around – as she does 99% of the time, it seems – over in the Middle East at present, though she might take a swing through most any area later this week, if not today. Try as she might – as would be the case with most any U.S. official – she’s simply the “Ugly American.” She sounds strident, looks anything but official and makes it to the TV screen every evening mouthing platitudes or empty threats and yucking it up with foreign officials who, one surmises, laugh behind her back since nothing she says or does seems to change anything, even if it should.

In early 2011, she praised Syrian President Bashir Assad but abruptly changed her tune when he began putting down what to him was an insurrection but to her was an attack upon his own people. Right about then, Libyan strongman Qaddafi engaged in the same stuff – nothing unusual about that in the Middle East. After all, the “Arab Spring” was on, having started in Tunisia with a self-immolation and continued in Egypt’s Tahrir Square in a humongous campout.

President Obama at the time was facing terrible economic figures, and still is, maybe even worse now. So, what would anyone expect him to say to the State Secretary other than, “Do something to get the people’s minds off U.S. problems?” And, what better way to play the usual “Ugly American” thing than to publicly call for some political lynchings, in this case Assad, Qaddafi and Egypt’s Mubarak, the latter the best Arab friend in the Middle East, bought fair and square after Carter’s Camp David clambake with Israel’s Begin and Egypt’s Sadat in 1978.

Obama/Clinton wheedled a resolution out of the UN Security Council (key members abstained) for an actual attack on Libya, somehow involving NATO, which one supposes had better things to do or had nothing to do. Congress was not consulted, naturally, since Obama, the Constitutional scholar (just ask him), knew that his glorious attack on a country of 6 million citizens (2 million less than New York City) would get deep-sixed there, though senators McCain, Graham, and Lieberman would probably have been gung-ho for it.

This represented a Congressional IQ well below 50, as the solons held their collective nose and looked the other way. Impeachment is such an ordeal! Why argue about Qaddafi – bad guy anyway? After all, isn’t every president entitled to his own war, especially since Obama said it would be only a little war, over in days, not weeks?

It took seven months (Libya’s troop-strength a humongous 76,000 boots), which connoted the military IQ of both Obama and Clinton, even though it started out as a “no-fly-zone” thing (accomplished by the fourth day) and ended up with this country and NATO massacring Libyans on the ground with bombs and missiles for months, just as O&C said Qaddafi would do.

Libya is in chaos, having just elected a parliament of 200 members to represent 6 million citizens. If the same ratio obtained in this country, the Senate would have the usual 100 cowards but the House would have 10,133 representatives. How does that bode for the Libyans, the usual Arab tribal society? It most likely will be “choose up sides and fight it out” time.

The drumbeat goes on for Syria’s Assad to agree to be lynched, but, whereas Libya had no help, Syria has Russia, Iran-next-door and China for friends. Just as before, as long as Obama/Clinton keeps screaming about sanctions, genocide and whatever else, she gives aid and comfort to militants, who mistakenly believe O&C are substance (actual weapons) and not blather. The insurrectionists, as usual, are fighting among themselves and no one has a clue about even to whom humanitarian aid should go.

The “Ugly (IQ-challenged) Americans” usually suffer from hoof ’n’ mouth disease, especially in the Middle East. There’s no way to measure the harm that’s been done by their constant blathering about democracy where such is not remotely possible and where they have no intention of “getting into it.” Clinton needs to come home, stay home, shut up and, best of all – go on vacation. Otherwise, she’ll continue to be an embarrassment.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

UK Professors - Sky Is Falling!

There’ve been a few hot days this summer and it was noted on NBC-TV (Brian Williams – 10 July) that the first six months of 2012 have been the hottest on record but one of his reporters mentioned that 2011 was cooler than 2010, another warm year.  Neither one mentioned, of course, that there were 21 days in Lexington, Ky., during 1936 that topped out at 100+ degrees. 

But, the manmade-global-warming alarmists are absolutely salivating, constructing their prognostication models and otherwise screaming that the sky is falling account profligate filling of the atmosphere with greenhouse gases, notably CO2, carbon dioxide, which is what everyone exhales, at least those among the living.  It also arises from the oceans, some 73% or so of the earth’s surface about which no one can do anything.

This heat-wave jerked the chain of a gaggle of University of Kentucky professors, none of them in the field of climatology or meteorology but in such other fields as horticulture and forestry.  Yeah…trees and garden stuff, in order to survive, absorb volumes of CO2 from the atmosphere (photosynthesis – ninth-grade science), but the forestry/horticulture folks didn’t advise deep-sixing the malls and parking lots to turn them into trees and cornfields.  Anyway, these harbingers of the catastrophic killing of the earth managed an op-ed piece in the Lexington [Kentucky] Herald-Leader of 11 July, in which they had the gall to give credence to the reports of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Not to be outdone, the main editorial quoted these worthies in advancing the fact – yeah, FACT – that people are killing the planet, another way of claiming all of us as suicidal.  The editorialist even accused Congress of a “yawning silence” and its consequential imperiling of the planet.  You can’t make this stuff up.  Of course, everyone knows that when Congress does much else but yawn it DOES imperil the U.S., at least.

Back to the UN IPCC!  Remember Copenhagen 2009, the big manmade-planet-killing-convention at which President Obama, fresh from his Nobel Peace Prize speech, and even Speaker Pelosi (with 20 Congresspersons) flew in, as well as about 200 other government apparatchiks from throughout the world.  The expected noteworthy item was probably an apology speech by Obama for the USA’s unspeakable climate-sins, though it can’t hold a candle (no pun intended) to the volumes of crap generated into the atmosphere by the folks (billions of them) in China and India. 

The professors made it plain that only the scientific documents concerning climate that are PEER-REVIEWED are credible.  The IPCC gang comprised the top peer-group in 2009 and before, with its main once-gurus residing in England (East Anglia University) plus a once-guru in the U.S. – Michael Mann of Penn State University. 

Just prior to Copenhagen, through their own e-mails to each other these “peers” accidentally exposed the fact that they had cooked the books in their “research,” making it appear that global warming was happening and primarily a manmade thing.  In the U.S., their work eventuated in the silly cap/trade legislation passed by the House without any of its members actually reading the bill.  It was designed, as Obama promised in 2008, to finish off the fossil-fuel business – coal, gas, oil.  Actually, there has been no consistent trend in the last 12-15 years to indicate global warming, manmade or otherwise, in the first place.  The Copenhagen clambake ended in a shambles…and fourteen-carat embarrassment for Obama and his Pelosi-partners-in-crime.

This is from the Washington Post of 9 July 1971: “The world could be as little as 50 or 60 years away from a disastrous new ice age, a leading atmospheric scientist predicts. Dr. S. I. Rasool of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and Columbia says that… .”  Yep, the reason had to do with the burning of fossil fuels.  The fact is that the professional climatologists would probably be the first to claim that the models and theories used in their predictions are not to be trusted.  Empirically, obviously, this is quite true.

The experts claim that from roughly 1000-1500 there was global warming, with around the year 1100 being the hottest and warmer than it is now.  They claim that from about 1500-1900 there was cooling and call that period the Little Ice Age, with around the year 1650 about the coldest. The main form of transportation in both periods was four-footed – horses, camels, elephants…no steam engines, automobiles, power plants, jets or anything using fossil fuels, except maybe to eat.  It’s doubtful that animal flatulence caused either warming or cooling.

As a local matter, the experts claim that the Ohio River was carved during one of the four ice-ages very long ago by glaciers that apparently attacked the South from the North Pole most likely during global cooling that eventually turned into global warming. The point: manmade global warming is a hoax.  Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth could not be shown in British schools until the teacher had pointed out the numerous errors, making it political propaganda, not science.

If there’s even a slight warming trend currently, it’s just part of the cyclical nature of climate.  The best evidence now seems to be a modification in the sun’s relationship to earth, perhaps demonstrated by “sunspots” investigation. Another expert on the NBC News said that there’s no credible scientific evidence that the tsunamis, for instance, in Indonesia and Japan, 2004 and 2011, respectively, were caused by global warming.

The scare tactics politically derive from the effort to bankrupt the agencies producing energy.  That fits the Obama agenda.  There is no need, notwithstanding that gaggle of UK non-climatologists/meteorologists or the editorialists, innocent, ignorant or otherwise, to think people are causing the sky to fall.

And so it goes.

Jim Clark

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