Everyone's Salvation--Government

In a 15 February column in the Lexington Herald-Leader, Western Kentucky University professor Aaron Hughey made the point that only government is able to provide needed assistance in handling natural disasters, at least the ones that can’t be handled locally. There’s no argument with this but there are barriers beyond which even the government can’t go in trying to handle Nature.

Hughey mentioned that a surge-barrier system around Manhattan could cost up to $22 billion but said it could be done. Of course it could be done, but would it be more cost-effective to simply clean up the mess every hundred years or so, as is the ongoing effort triggered by Hurricane Sandy, a century-dated storm, though FEMA seems to have been almost totally AWOL. And if Manhattan is to have a surge-barrier system, shouldn’t there be one on Long Island, Staten Island, the New Jersey coast and, indeed, the entire coast, Maine to Florida and around the Gulf since hurricanes hit them regularly, washing away the beaches, waterfront houses, etc.?

Regarding the attempt to repair constantly, why shouldn’t the president appoint a czar to draw up an executive order mandating no help for anyone insisting on living in a flood plain? That would do away with any entity ever having to pay for setting things right, just using plain common sense. The fact that the guy in Peoria must pick up the tab to help the guy who unnecessarily insists on staying in harm’s way is unseemly.

The estimate is that Katrina cost the U.S. government $110 billion…and New Orleans is still there, much if not most of it remaining in ruined condition. Common sense would have insisted on moving the residents and letting much if not most of the city, already then under many feet of water, go. Example: The whole town of Valmeyer, Illinois, was moved after a 1993 flood, with the U.S. paying 75% of the cost of moving or buying and state and local governments picking up the rest. No more floods…ever.

Standing within levees and canals about eight feet below sea level and gradually sinking, with Lake Pontchartrain posed above it behind a questionable dam, most of New Orleans presents an untenable problem, one that could probably have been more cost-efficiently erased by just relocating the population. But that’s too sensible for government, which has no problem with doing away with an aircraft carrier costing $22 billion to construct.

The thrust of Hughey’s column, however, was less about disasters per se and more about the undue emphasis placed in this country on self-reliance and an implied insensitivity by citizens for others. The disaster angle was meant to show that folks need government to take care of them—the Obama syndrome. Hughey said that not everything should be about generating a profit. Of course not! The generous government does not create a profit, except for the profits contrived by crooked politicians.

Hughey asked: “Did the free market abolish slavery…desegregate our schools…secure the vote for women…pay for my mother's cancer treatment (over a half-million dollars) during the last two years of her life?” The implied answer is NO. The actual answer is YES. The tax money used for these great things was derived from someone making a tax-paying profit and establishing tax-paying jobs.

As a practical matter, the only economic system ever to exist in this country is the free-market system. As the country built the greatest economic engine in history, there has never been a communist system or a socialist system, though the country is headed toward socialism now.

Soon, government will control healthcare completely, an individual’s most sensitive area, the difference between life and death. Once a society slips under governmental control, incentive disappears (that evil profit motive) as everyone approaches the level of the lowest common denominator. Account the differences in people, there never has been and will never be a so-called “level playing field” without it being superficially mandated, everyone operating on the same level of mediocrity.

As earthquakes and other catastrophes occur throughout the world, a knowledgeable person will see that in no nation is there even a fraction of relief of that which obtains in this country, both public and PRIVATE. But staring down nature and trying to effect some sort of risk-free environment is like spitting in the wind…silly, regardless of sensitivities.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Editorialist Disses Judd

Lexington Herald-Leader editorial-writer Jamie Lucke was in near-panic mode with her offering of 14 February, to wit, that Ashley Judd might actually move to Kentucky from Tennessee and make a run for the Senate, figuring the incumbent republican, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, to be the presumptive opposition. She thinks McConnell is fair game on the basis of a Louisville Courier-Journal Bluegrass Poll indicating a McConnell defeat.

A “bluegrass poll” would apply mostly to Louisville and Lexington, where voters routinely vote democratic even in national elections. Lexington-resident republican Andy Barr was elected to the House from the Sixth District last November but lost his home county by some 7,500 votes. He nearly beat Ben Chandler (far less than a thousand votes behind) in 2010, so the Legislature tried to gerrymander him out of 2012 contention, shuffling counties and raising the district democratic registration from 68% to 78%, but he received over half of the votes anyway.

Predictably in—as Limbaugh would have it—feminazi-mode (getting in Governor Wilkinson’s face), Lucke explained all the reasons Judd would be an excellent choice for the spot, making her into the best thing since WD-40 and remarking that Judd (Harvard Masters Degree) was driving a champagne-colored BMW as far back as 25 years…so there! Lucke, however, insisted that Judd would be McConnell’s “dream opponent” if she should do what Hillary Clinton did back in the day—moved to New York and bought a Senate seat.

Lucke correctly claims that a Judd-McConnell race would be about her and not about him, “vulnerable, unpopular nationally and in Kentucky.” McConnell has been in the Senate since 1985 (also republican leader for last six years), leading one to suspect that, contrarily, he might possess a certain popularity in Kentucky, not to mention considerable clout vis-à-vis what he can do for the state. Who cares whether or not he’s popular nationally? Anyhow, it’s often the unpopular statesman who makes a difference—a good difference.

Included in the editorial was the Judd poster, wherein she acclaims Obama as brilliant and that she’s committed to him. Obama is anything but popular in Kentucky and his brilliance might be judged by his remark during a speech about a navy “corpse-man” (corpsman). Teleprompters should be phonetically-structured for the pronunciation-challenged (or maybe that’s the way it’s said in Hawaii). His nutty remark about policemen acting stupidly while doing their duty also remarked his brilliance.

The latter remark might make one wonder about Obama’s actions on the night of 11 September 2012 when, after being briefed by the Defense Secretary about a potential bloodbath in Benghazi at about 5:00 p.m., he made no further contact with either Defense or his own White House NSA and staff during the interim but managed to say the next morning that the carnage (four dead Americans and a seven-hour attack on the Consulate and its annex) was caused by a film made by—of course—an American, an egregious lie, which he knew and repeated two weeks later at the UN. In that episode, he gave the term “stupidly” a new meaning, not to mention honesty.

Lucke wonders if the Democrat Party “has a future in Kentucky.” Of course it does – just not in national politics. It controls the governor’s seat and the Kentucky House and most courthouses, and it’s probable that this will be the case for a number of years, though the republican Senate margin is not huge. A republican governor is virtually unthinkable (3 since 1931).

Lucke says about McConnell: “…whoever challenges him will be dragged through the mud… .” Well, of course! That’s politics on all levels. Judd would do the same if she should get the democrat nomination. Imagine the film clips or the photo-ops (perhaps some in near-nude mode). What a poster that would be! McConnell could be pictured as too old at age 70, complete with false-crutches, false teeth and the like. Mud is where all politicians expect to live periodically if not most of the time.

Lucke seems to think no other democrat would be willing to step up (as Calipari would say) and take on McConnell if the photogenic Judd (“Hollywood liberal,” according to her grandmother) should run. She’s dreaming. There most likely are a number of potential candidates, jealousy vis-à-vis Judd as incentive, though they may be more scared by McConnell’s war-chest than by an actress, whose greatest fame currently is derived from the inevitable and plenteous camera- angle TV-shots of her at Kentucky basketball games.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Grammy-Cabinet Phobia

Memo to Cabinet-rank Secretaries:

Let me be clear from the outset of this document (which I know you’ll save as a memento from one of the five greatest presidents, with an heir one day turning it into cash on Pawn Stars) that I apologize for its generic nature. I would write each of you a note if I had the time but, as you know, I am selling my economic plans directly to the public, which means that I practically live on Air Force One these days, just as I have sacrificially in the interests of preserving OUR legacy for the last four years. Obviously, I am bypassing the Congress, just as I did in order to attack that devil Qaddafi, because it is mired in gridlock and wouldn’t get to the subject at hand for maybe two years.

An awareness of the subject of this note was triggered by the CBS memo recently to the participants in the Grammy Awards orgy (little joke there) having to do with attending the ceremony fully clothed. Actually, the memo was not to the men but to the women, who, justifiably, have been liberated and feel it their right to appear nude if they like…or at least nearly nude. CBS had to pay a fine of $550,000 a few years ago because Janet Jackson showed her considerable wares (do not mention this to Michelle) during the Super Bowl halftime, aired on CBS, so its motivation is not ethically pure but praiseworthy, nevertheless.

Obviously, I am not writing about the matter of nudity and daresay that no one in the Cabinet would even think of nipple-mongering…way too far over the hill (another little joke there). It is the decorum that concerns me. Since the paparazzi and TV crews are on the scene before the Cabinet meetings begin and sometimes even during them, it is especially important to stay awake. VPOTUS was castigated profoundly a while back for sleeping during a State-of-the-Union address, a masterpiece out of which he cheated himself but also reflecting adversely on the entire administration. He said it was no #%$@&*^ big deal but promised to take No-Doze next time. I commended him for having that attitude and expect you all to follow his lead.

Please do not forget your assigned places at the conference table. Milling around makes you look indecisive and that also reflects badly on my leadership. State and Defense are to my left and right, with VPOTUS and the AG directly across. I have thought of making the other seats first-come, first-served but that might induce running in the halls, something not even allowed in the schools. I have noticed some right-and-left head-shaking when I am speaking, even among your staffers, and that must be stopped. People still remember SCOTUS Alioto doing that during a S-o-t-U address a while back and they might have actually concluded that he was right. I will brook no disagreements displayed in meetings since that makes me look bad and, anyhow, I would hate to pop you off with my trusty .38 (another little joke there, Chicago style). Do not—repeat—DO NOT repeat that.

There has been some carelessness lately in the matter of interruptions. It’s bad enough that I haven’t a teleprompter for use in these meetings but that problem is exacerbated when I’m interrupted while dispensing wisdom. So, let me reiterate a rule, to wit, speak only when you are addressed, and PUH…..LEEZE, do not put up your hand—that’s so “may I be excused-ish.” Also, some of your staffers pop their gum and I find that so distracting as to derail my train of thought, sometimes completely wrecking it. This doesn’t indicate that I have only a one-track mind (I can dribble/putt and chew gum at the same time)—only that I’m focused to the point of laser-like concentration.

Some members have been careless in the matter of verbiage. In the last meeting, one of you (you know who you are) used the term “terrorism,” and I take that personally since I made it clear years ago that the term “man-caused disaster” is operative. Also, one of you mentioned George Bush and even though you did so derogatorily I took that as a personal insult and though I haven’t mentioned it to you I expect an apology. Also for obvious reasons, immigration is never to be described as illegal, no matter if applied to an immigrant Cuban serial-killer. After all, the U.S. is a “melting-pot” and certainly doesn’t need any ICE cubes in it (pardon the play-on-words or something like that, but I’m on a roll today—WE WON).

On an unrelated matter, if you decide to say something publicly, run your remarks by Jay Carney, who will give, or not, approval. When I made my glorious attack on Libya and announced it in Brazil, Secretary Gates was in Russia and characterized it as “on the fly,” meaning unplanned or badly planned. Secretary Gates, who had the mistaken notion that the Defense Secretary should have known about it, accepted my upbraiding like a man and promised not do that again. He left Defense soon after, so you are on notice.

Barack Hussein Obama
President
Commander-in-Chief
Evolver-in-Chief
Griever-in-Chief

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

The Evolving President

The elitists are fond of castigating as a hopeless, mindless zealot anyone claiming to “have that old time religion” or religion of any kind, except maybe Islam these days, at least in the U.S., where a Baptist can be called a dangerous screwball-nutcase but a Moslem referenced only as holy, else the hate-police get on the case. It’s fashionable to accuse believers of opposing the president on religious grounds, so why not take religion out of the mix and just examine his approaches on other grounds such as biological or—better—just plain common sense?

Flip-floppers are usually condemned, sometimes in even the mainstream media, the democrat propaganda arm, but Obama gets a pass on his 180-degree turn on marriage on the basis that he has—get this!—evolved, translated, even more superior in intellect than before and certainly more superior to that of anyone else. Well…doesn’t the human’s difference from the ape prove that evolution takes place and so why shouldn’t the president evolve, assuming, of course, that one believes in that strain of evolving? I don’t.

Anyway, the prez needed only the time between campaigns to evolve, just four years, perhaps some kind of record-setting affirmative brain-adjustment. After all, it took Darwin over 20 years to get Origin of Species right and published. Obama is/was a much faster study than even the definer of evolving. Of course, the prez might not have started evolving in 2008, when he declared that marriage can be between ONLY a man and woman, but might not have started until the campaign year of 2012, meaning an even faster and more overpowering tsunami of brain-waves activity.

The prez has to be admired for his intellectual bravery since his public announcement that Atty. Gen. Holder will not enforce the Defense of Marriage Act means that he has acted un-Constitutionally in not enforcing the nation’s laws, as he has sworn to do. This, along with his unprovoked and un-Constitutional attack on Libya, should have triggered impeachment proceedings in the House but the House apparently has not evolved as fast as the president, not exactly stuck in ape-mode but just not as far advanced.

The president has declared that men may marry men now, though he has not designated if the pairs are to be man and wife (and which is which) or partner and partner or significant other and other, things that should be settled since kids often have to designate these people on documents of one kind or another. Or it may be that—probably through executive order—such designations will be removed from all documents, the better to enhance diversity, which is the Nirvana of all endeavor, presently the acme of evolving. In the mix, it is now possible for homosexual “lovers” to be assigned to the same navy ship, since no marriage contract is required to disqualify them as sailor and sailor.

The president has also placed his domestic imprimatur on scouting. In that famous interview the other day with Scott Pelley of CBS News, the president said that the Boy Scouts should be open to homosexuals, never mind the longtime BSA aversion to unnaturalness. God is very important in scouting and the scriptures vehemently condemn homosexual behavior but a homosexual scoutmaster might take a different view, especially if he has evolved in a superior manner, meaning that he has advanced beyond silly superstition. So far, the BSA has not caved, so an executive order may soon be in process.

As Evolver-in-Chief, the president has shown great mental dexterity. He was against the Iraq “surge” but ordered an Afghanistan “surge,” having evolved into that position. He promised to close Gitmo but evolved out of that troublesome problem, as well as trying the terrorist butchers in New York City. He castigated the Bush administration for its tactics but has evolved to such exponential mental acuity that he signed the Patriot Act renewal and has made Bush’s use of drones merely inconsequential compared to his use, in which thousands of civilians have been killed in such places as Pakistan, with which the U.S. is not at war.

Currently, the best example of the president’s evolving is his superior understanding of the economy, marked by his insistence that it can be operated, public and private, on money borrowed from China. Since no other credible economist understands this—indeed, just the opposite—the prez is operating in a mnemonic area totally beyond that of any other humanoid, though it’s rumored that certain chimps at the Washington Zoo have figured this out but are in danger of evolving out of the ability to understand this method and so have been placed on “arrested development” medicine and will be invited to teach at Harvard, Obama’s old school.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Lexington Boondoggle

The Town Branch project now has an official plan, though it’s doubtful that many think it will ever come to initiation, much less fruition. Apparent cheerleader for the effort is H-L columnist Tom Eblen, but even he, on 03 February, spoke of it as possibly symbolic, whatever that means. He also mentioned that three of the plan’s six presenters to a jury of deciders were women – perhaps making it more feasible?

Eblen said naysayers (translated as realists) would claim the endeavor to be “impractical, unaffordable, and frivolous, [but] it is none of that.” It’s all of that, of course, especially when the city can’t even straighten out its pension-problems and is always on the edge of bankruptcy. Eblen claimed the compelling argument was not esthetic but economic, thus attracting people and investment dollars. Easy access, parking and movement, aesthetic or otherwise, are what attract visitors and dollars.

As quoted in the paper of 05 February, Jeff Fugate, head of the Downtown Development Authority, said the plan was “aspirational” but doable. Aspirational? Essentially, it does away with parking lots in favor of parking garages, hated by everyone. For some strange reason, the vehicle bridge on MLK is recommended to be replaced by a pedestrian bridge. Why is foot traffic between Main and High that important and why excise a well-used street, leaving motorists to greater frustration? Why put a tree-boulevard in the middle of Vine Street, thus ruining it as a traffic facility?

Eblen mentioned in the 03 February article that Louisville and gridlock-cursed Atlanta are sinking funds into some sort of recreational areas AROUND those cities (trails and appropriate amenities), not in and through them to help their downtowns draw crowds and investments. This makes a certain sense, assuming anything needs doing in the first place, at least as far as recreation is concerned and noting that Lexington already has many parks, some of them, like Woodland, fairly large.

Urban renewal was a big thing in Lexington in the 1960s and has remained so. This is when the train tracks were removed downtown, the old depot was razed and New Circle came online. The understanding then was that downtown was set up for institutions, restaurants, specialty stores, entertainment, offices and badly needed parking-areas, while people in outlying areas (most of the population) needed easy access to all destinations, including downtown and involving some of the same entities as well as housing and office/retail outlets, for which private investors financed their own parking facilities.

With further planning such as one-way streets, the downtown was made much more accessible and attractive, though parking has always been and remains a problem. The architecture is anything but ugly. The area is supposed to be service-friendly, not a playground, though there’s plenty of green-space downtown. Trees usually become a nuisance, not least because they litter and are not well-kept.

If recreation and parks are serious considerations, Lexington, imitating Louisville and Atlanta, might consider establishing an around-the-city-trail or a large outlying park such as in using the joined areas of Jacobson Park and Lakeside Golf Course, especially since Lexington has a surfeit of golf courses and would not suffer in losing one. Jacobson Park includes 216 acres, while the golf course covers another 185 acres, a total of 401 acres, roughly the size of 400 football fields or an area roughly 180 times the size of the CentrePoint “pasture” downtown.

That area includes a sizeable body of water that’s good for both paddle-boating and fishing, whereas floating vessels would be impossible on any part of Town Branch brought to the surface. Instead, there would be a constant need for removing trash and keeping the area from becoming like Phoenix Park, an often unattractive haven for whatever or whomever.

Being a naysayer is not being against progress. There have been grandiose plans deserving of naysayers, especially those offered by the university architecture gang, for a couple decades or so to revert downtown to pre-urban renewal status (like closing Vine Street), thus heading backwards, not forward. Especially regarding the ongoing recession (still serious despite official contrariwise protestations) and constant tax increases, the city should do practical things.

The Jacobson-Lakeside thing might not be the best approach but it’s better than Town Branch and at relatively little cost. Actually, nothing needs doing.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

McCain/Kerry Treachery

Senator McCain seems to have staffers on the lookout 24/7 for any TV camera in the Capitol and to make appointments on the plethora of talk-shows, particularly on Sunday mornings, in order to keep himself in the public eye on a daily basis. He even showed up at the Kerry State-Secretary hearing to “introduce” perhaps the nation’s most perverse and treasonous political operative of the last 40 years or so. It was sickening, especially in light of his mean-spirited and utterly crude treatment of former senator Hagel in his Defense-Secretary hearing.

As reported by the Boston Herald-Reporter, in a speech in Boston Sept. 9, 2006, then-Senator John Kerry said, regarding the Bush administration, “It is immoral to treat 9/11 as a political pawn (to) excuse the invasion of Iraq. They [9/11 victims] were attacked and killed not by Saddam Hussein but by Osama bin Laden.” Cynicism – especially regarding morality – of that magnitude did not speak well for a State Secretary. Al Qaeda was not mentioned as a reason for invading Iraq in 2003, but to wipe out what the intelligence agencies of a number of nations insisted was Saddam’s WMD threat. No one has proven yet that he did not move those weapons to another country before March 2003.

Quoting the Boston Globe of March 25, 2004, “In a question-and-answer session before a Senate committee in 1971, John F. Kerry, who was a leading antiwar activist at the time, asserted that 200,000 Vietnamese per year were being ‘murdered by the United States of America’ and said he had gone to Paris and ‘talked with both delegations at the peace talks’ and met with communist representatives.” At the time, an unbelievably egotistical Kerry was a low-rank reserve naval officer committing an act of treason (defined as “the betrayal of a trust: TREACHERY”) with the enemy while Senator McCain and others were caged like dogs and tortured in the Hanoi Hilton.

This means that by the time he made that statement (his exact words, “So what I am saying is that yes, there will be some recrimination but far, far less than the 200,000 a year who are murdered by the United States of America …”). Kerry’s comrades/nation had murdered [his word] 1.6 million Vietnamese 1964-71 (or almost 4 percent of the population for 1970), mostly civilians – women, children, and old men. He’s never offered a scintilla of proof for that wacky accusation. Regarding morality, he betrayed his country in 1970 in France, lied to Congress in 1971, and spewed hatred on Sept. 9, 2006, using a monumental tragedy in a blatantly political act of disingenuousness.

In another Op-Ed piece for the New Hampshire Union Leader, Kerry said, “Iraq has made America less safe. The terrorists are not on the run. Terrorist acts tripled between 2004 and 2005. Al-Qaida has spawned a decentralized network operating in 65 countries, most of them joining since 9/11.” But Obama has recently declared that al Qaeda is all but dead. This is the guy McCain was announcing as the best thing since sliced bread.

McCain took Hagel apart because then-Senator Hagel voted against the “surge” that took place in Iraq in 2007, involving some 30,000 extra American troops sent over for that purpose. The president wannabe John Edwards called the surge the “McCain Doctrine.” McCain tried to make Hagel say he was wrong but Hagel said history would make the call. As it turns out, Hagel was right. Iraq is a killing field today, just as it was when Saddam the butcher ran the show. If anything, it is more antagonistic to this country than it was then.

Both McCain and Hagel served well in Vietnam but, while McCain dropped bombs, Hagel was a grunt, a platoon sergeant who volunteered for Vietnam when he was actually ordered to peaceful Germany in 1968. He based his Fallujah vote on whether or not that fight was worth the casualties. He had seen men blown to bits but McCain never saw any of that, just puffs of smoke on the ground. The casualties in the Fallujah fight to the coalition troops was well over 20 per day, most of them Americans simply because they fought in the largest numbers.

Huffington Post, 01 February 2013: “Incoming Secretary of State John Kerry said that President Barack Obama offered him the job one week before U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice withdrew from contention. ‘He called me, actually a week before Susan got out of the thing,’ he told The Boston Globe in an interview…’ .” Kerry’s ego (had home movies made of him running on the shore in Vienam) is so big that he wanted to make it plain he was not Obama’s second choice, even though everyone knows he was. He is delusional, as is the president. They deserve each other and McCain deserves both of them.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Meaningless Gun-Hearing

The gun hearing—perhaps better described as “gun-control” hearing—held by the Senate Judiciary Committee on 29 January was interesting if only because it was held in light of the fact that most gun laws, hundreds if not thousands of them, are not currently enforced and/or violators prosecuted, a fact thoroughly brought out in the hearing. Also brought out thoroughly was the fact that gun-control laws passed in the 1990s made no difference in the gun-violence numbers. A current example of the futility of these laws is Chicago—500 murders in 2012 and already 40 during January, practically all by guns.

The usual partisan split was obvious. Democrats, of course, believe in regulating everything, even to the point of light-bulbs and salt-intake by humans. Republicans tend to oppose any further regulation of most things and would gladly dispose of thousands now in existence. The usual silliness was also in evidence, as Chairman Leahy established his bona fides by claiming both father- and grandfather-status only to be outdone by ranking member Grassley, who claimed father- and grandfather- and great-grandfather-status. Apparently, all others need not apply.

The panel of witnesses included a police-chief, law-professor, NRA president and two civilians, one of them being the only woman, not that this means anything, just a fact. It might not have hurt to have had an ex-con or two, who had used guns in crimes, to declaim on the subject, maybe furnishing the best possible information concerning the acquisition and use of weapons. That would have likely been too practical for consideration.

The thinking of the regulators goes something like this: “guns kill people so guns should be banned, just like booze back in the 1920s for a decade or so.” The bubbly flowed freely despite the Constitutional Amendment against it, though if given at least a generation or two it might have actually done some good. Enforcement, of course, was a problem—not enough “revenoors” to go around.

According to the U.S. Dept. of Commerce, there were 10.8 million motor-vehicle accidents in the U.S. in 2009 involving 33,800 deaths (791 in Kentucky) within 30 days of a given wreck. Should, therefore, there be a ban on the manufacture, sale and use of automobiles?

In those wrecks, 10,086 drivers had a blood-alcohol-content of .08% or above (about 176 in Kentucky), making them legally drunk in most if not all states. Should there be, therefore and in addition to the banning of cars, also a ban on the manufacture, sale and use of beverage alcohol?

This is from Autoweek 13 December 2011: “‘According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), more than 3,000 people lost their lives last year in distraction-related accidents,’ said chairman Deborah A.P. Hersman.” Does this mean that Ipads, Iphones, cell-phones, Blackberries, or even car-radios should be banned, in addition to booze and cars?

When the president pontificated in Newtown after the deaths at Sandy Hook school in December, he seemed to leave the impression that the deaths were somehow the responsibility of all citizens, the entire U.S. society. That also seemed to be the notion of many of the senators, a horrible and ludicrous position to take, that somehow people in Peoria were at least part of the cause of mayhem in Connecticut.

The mayor of New York indicated that his city would or might or should take action against people perpetrating too much salt-intake in food-products. Should salt be banned? Diabetes is caused or aggravated by too much sugar-intake. Should it be banned? Smokers and obese people are claimed by the experts to place too much strain and expense on healthcare entities? Should these people be neutralized (euphemism for “offed”).

Guns do not and never have killed people. Neither have cars, though drunk drivers use them in the same way that a thug uses a Saturday-night-special to pop off his prey. Drunk drivers, like the thug, are murderers or potential murderers since they understand exactly what they might do—and drive drunk anyway.

There was much said in the hearing about mental-health problems that dispose or predispose toward violence and that some entity has been remiss in not spotting this, as if that could easily be done. Having someone committed or designated as unfit to own a gun is virtually impossible, even if someone knew how to spot potential killers.

Despite the president’s executive orders—all 23 of them—and the breast-beating in the hearing, nothing much will be done. People, not guns, kill people.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Women in Combat?

Defense Secretary Panetta announced the other day that women, being quite suited to the activity, may now take their place in the infantry and fight the nation’s wars. He, of course, a political appointee and therefore free of thought-processes, did not make that decision. It was made by President Obama, who has discovered a mother-lode of votes in the female age-group most affected by this invitation to carnage, not that many of the ladies will be all that interested. Rather, they see this decision by the “hunk” not as the bare-faced pandering it is, but as further proof that unisex rules now, the devil take the hindmost male who objects.

Ironically, as Obama announced the ladies capable of severe training, hand-to-hand fighting and dying, he also made it clear that he would have to think long and hard before allowing a son (Trayvon Martin-type, as he noted a while back) to play football, so dangerous are its probabilities for trauma to the dear child. When this kind of oxymoron-think occurs in the top office of the land, one has to wonder where the nation is headed. Obama once quite publicly said that policemen in Massachusetts acted stupidly, so maybe he knows the modus operandi for that.

One would think that Obama would approve of the ladies playing in the National Football League as a reasonable part of basic training, honing their skills to both hurt and take punishment, which is what the NFL is all about. After all, a number of New Orleans Saints operatives were suspended last year (one for a whole year) for fomenting a program involving payments to players based on the number and kind of injuries they inflicted on members of the opposition. The figures were not disclosed but one can envision a lineman-concussion at $5,000 and a quarterback-concussion at twice that amount, with mere broken bones somewhat less.

The president’s mind seems to still be in Hawaii. Women play something as unimportant as sports only in their own leagues, in which they realize equality, but may not play in the NFL, the NBA, or the hockey leagues, in which they could get killed. And yet, in something as critically important as mortal conflict, in which endurance and strength mean the difference between life and death, they are quite welcome, thank you, sir. And, during the times the shells are not falling, they can nurse their babies and do their hair.

Despite objections by field commanders, Obama inflicted the military with openly practicing homosexuals…welcome to the fun and games originating in Sodom and Gomorrah…just great for morale. Now, the ladies get their chance, never mind a plethora of laws on the books such as rape-laws and restraining orders designed to protect them as a special class because they can’t physically/emotionally hold their own in even a domestic setting. This is not meant pejoratively…just a fact.

Think what would happen if a lady is taken prisoner by a bunch of al Qaeda thugs…at least before they stoned her or cut off her head. It’s perfectly obvious that Obama either hasn’t thought of this or just doesn’t care, even though he has two daughters who could be eligible for a possible draft. But the votes are there and the democrat men will follow his lead since the office and not the country—or even the women—takes precedence. Disgusting!

When the men in a country are willing to see their wives and daughters subjected to and humiliated by battlefield carnage, they’ve lost any claim to self-respect or the respect of others. The Congress, if it allows this idiocy and insensitivity to go forward, can be labeled as either unprincipled or as collectively dumb as a gourd…or both. Laws upstage executive orders, the vehicle Obama favors as the way to govern.

It is an unmistakable fact that a nation is on a downward track morally when it reduces its womanhood to cannon fodder, never mind some ladies’ protestations to the contrary. The next step is the dustbin of history, along with all the other people-states that rotted from the inside out.

Political correctness rules these days, no matter how whacko it has become. Licentious hedonism is another term for it, whether applied to the violation of women or the perversions of homosexual behavior. Glorification of the unnatural, whether the wedding of two men or feeding women to Islamic butchers, redounds to national disaster and disgrace.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Clinton/Kerry Farce

Some of the best entertainment of last week was furnished by Fox and C-Span, namely, the Senate-committee hearings for State secretary Clinton vis-à-vis the Benghazi massacre and Senator Kerry vis-à-vis his nomination to succeed Clinton. The Senators and witnesses made their speeches, all of them reading their remarks, even the answers to questions.

I didn’t partake of either completely but heard/saw enough to know that the hearings were virtually useless with regard to anything substantive being learned. The democrat senators were in congratulatory mode and the republicans attempted to be in attack mode but their hearts didn’t seem to be in it. The Benghazi thing was a cover-up by Clinton and Obama of such magnitude that she could do little more than just say that efforts were being made to see that such a thing (the attack, not the cover-up) would not happen again.

The senators went easy on Kerry, whose appointment is assured, and whose job actually means very little, as has been the case with Clinton, whose countless miles of travel (112 nations?) elicited oohs and aahs exponentially. One remembers that soon after Clinton was confirmed in 2009 Obama appointed Richard Holbrooke and George Mitchell as special envoys to Afghanistan/Pakistan and the Middle East, respectively, completely bypassing her as a significant player in the most important problem-areas.

The fact: Obama is a micromanager and will make all decisions. Kerry, as did Clinton, will live on plush Air Force planes and have a great time doing photo-ops here and there and everywhere.

Clinton and Kerry share the distinction for getting it wrong on Syria. According to Newsmax of 11 May 2011 (via The Cable), Kerry indicated to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on 16 March 2011 that in his judgment Syria was no lost cause and would embrace a legitimate relationship with the U.S. and the West and the economic opportunity that comes with that. Not long after that, he said, “I've always said the top goal of Assad is to perpetuate his own regime.” Another case of “I did this before I did that,” with reference to his approach to the Iraq War? Go figure! Kerry – lost ball in tall weeds!

According to CNSNews.com of 28 March 2011, Clinton said that visiting lawmakers regarded Assad as a reformer and that, therefore, the U.S. will not intervene on behalf of Syrian civilians. Both could not have been more wrong about Assad; however, the U.S. has not meddled, at least as far as is known. Regardless of any bluster Kerry might make, despite goading by Senators McCain and Graham, this country is not likely to get in that mess, though Obama has dispatched troops to Syria-neighbor Turkey. It seems that neither he, Clinton nor Kerry remember the American Revolution, in which the citizens/colonists did to King George what Syrian citizens have been doing to Assad and paying a frightful cost. Let ’em settle it.

As a result of the grandiose Arab Spring of 2011 (Obama’s shameful contribution, the unprovoked blindsiding attack on Libya), the Middle East, especially Libya, is a cauldron of violence and unrest, the most recent example in Egypt, where Tahrir Square has again become the focal point of potential revolution. For his part, Obama has just sent over some fighter jets to Head Honcho Morsi, who is delivering the government into the hands of the dreaded Muslim Brotherhood. U.S. policy is and will remain under Kerry/Obama in a shambles vis-à-vis the Middle East.

This is from The Daily Caller via Wickileaked of 29 November 2010: “On a February trip to the Middle East, Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman John Kerry (D-MA) told Qatari leaders that the Golan Heights should be returned to Syria, that a Palestinian capital should be established in East Jerusalem as part of the Arab-Israeli peace process, and that he was ‘shocked’ by what he saw on a visit to Gaza.” The Golan Heights forms a critical defense area/facility for Israel. Kerry is obviously pro-Hamas and probably is not disturbed by Iran’s threat to Israel, not realizing that the threat applies to every country in the region and ultimately to the U.S.

Could this approach refer to what Obama meant when he said to the then-Russian president last year when he thought he was off-mike that he would have more “flexibility” once he was reelected? He’s made it plain that he expects to govern through executive orders, which is what he did concerning his unilateral attack on Libya – no Congressional consultation. Kerry explained why when asked about it by Senator Paul. His answer was that the Constitutional process would have been too slow and Libyans (like the Syrians now) were killing each other. Kerry, too, possesses so much “flexibility” that as the Foreign Relations Committee chairman then and thus the one to call out the president, he made no fuss, perhaps with an eye to the future.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Inaugural Poetic Justice?

John F. Kennedy was the first president to inculcate a poem as part of the inaugural observance. His choice as poet in 1961 was Robert Frost, then age 87, a man of letters with few peers. The theme of that inaugural could have been “A New Beginning,” since Kennedy, a WWII veteran, was young and was replacing a much older man, Dwight Eisenhower, a top WWII general and former head of NATO.

The inaugural theme on 21 January this year seemed to be “The Year of the Homosexual.” To celebrate this approach, the poet chosen by Obama was Richard Blanco, a homosexual, who read his poem just prior to the benediction, given by a clergyman, Luis Leon, who was a second choice for that task, the first choice, Louie Giglio, having been disinvited account his remarks in a presentation many years ago indicating the connection between homosexuality and sin.

Giglio had been invited in large part due to his fight against human trafficking. Leon is known for performing marriages between homosexuals, never mind the Defense of Marriage Act, which the president has vowed publicly not to enforce, or the laws and Constitutions of the vast majority of states that mandate marriage as between a man and woman. The president had the opposite view in 2009, upholding the DOM, but has “evolved.”

An aside: The military bands saved the day musically. The vocalists were far out of their milieu, singing music for which they seemed to have had no training. The lady who sang the national anthem rewrote both tune and rhythm, thus challenging the band and creating a sort of national sacrilege that seems more and more to mark the nation itself.

Frost’s early published poems seem to have been marked by consistent rhyme and rhythm, while much of his later work, though not exclusively, was more like Blanco’s – rhyme-less and relatively unstructured. This reminds, actually, of short essays broken into lines, with or without punctuation. Structured poetry is far more demanding than this type.

For the inaugural, Frost reverted to strict rhyme and rhythm and ended his poem with these words:

"There is a call to life a little sterner,
And braver for the earner, learner, yearner.
Less criticism of the field and court
And more preoccupation with the sport.
It makes the prophet in us all presage
The glory of a next Augustan age
Of a power leading from its strength and pride,
Of young ambition eager to be tried,
Firm in our free beliefs without dismay,
In any game the nations want to play.
A golden age of poetry and power
Of which this noonday's the beginning hour."

Frost was concerned that people be about their business, being anything but victims, real or imagined, and daring any nation to “take us on.” The direction was ever onward and the devil take the hindmost. This runs counter to the nation’s direction currently, in which victim-hood is practically glorified and the course of least resistance, such as just printing money, is followed, i.e., an almost total lack of spine. Frost, who sired a large family and endured tragedies such as the deaths of children, died in 1963. He would likely have been horrified at the current state of affairs, with little hope evidenced by this administration.

Blanco, at 44, is about half Frost’s age and, of course, has a totally dissimilar background. This is how he finished his poem:

"We head home: through the gloss of rain or weight
of snow, or the plum blush of dusk, but always—home,
always under one sky, our sky. And always one moon
like a silent drum tapping on every rooftop
and every window, of one country—all of us—
facing the stars
hope—a new constellation
waiting for us to map it,
Waiting for us to name it—together."

It’s highly doubtful that Blanco spoke for “all of us,” especially in the sort of melancholy of the words. We hope while things wait to be done? This seems to be what’s happening now. Neither president nor Congress is doing much more than waiting…or waiting each other out…as the nation continues to slide morally, as seen in this inauguration’s theme, and in more tangible ways, domestically and internationally, in the process losing its “exclusiveness” and sinking to the lowest common denominator of the nations. More’s the pity.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Disastrous Presidential Incompetence

This is from Euronews of 09 March 2011: Gaddafi told Turkey’s TRT channel that the West only wanted to take action so it could seize control of Libyan oil production. He also claimed that if he stepped down, it would leave a power vaccum [sic] to be filled by al Qaeda. “We are the ones preventing al Qaeda from taking control. They would drag the whole region into chaos,” he said.

Concerning what has happened in Algeria (deaths of more Americans at the hands of al Qaeda terrorists), President Obama can take another lesson from his mentor and spiritual adviser, the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah (God damn America) Wright – “The chickens have come home to roost.” Apparently for reasons of ego or maybe at the behest of three sob-sisters in the administration, Obama declared a personal war on Libya that more than just conceivably has led to this circumstance.

Only a few days after Qaddafi made that statement, Obama unleashed the U.S. Air Force in bombing and missile attacks on Libya, which posed no threat to any nation, especially the U.S., and started what amounted to a seven-month war costing no one knows how many Libyan civilian deaths and $1.1 billion. He did it without any consultation with Congress and despite the fact that both the Defense Secretary and Joint Chiefs Chairman inveighed mightily against it, even before a congressional committee. The DOD chairman described the operation as being done “on the fly,” obviously without any input by him or the JCC, meaning no sufficient military planning.

In the operation that Obama said would take “days, not weeks,” the governmental structure in Libya, whether or not the president approved of it, was destroyed and that benighted nation is in total chaos today, with the U.S. State Department in such a shambles its honchos watched by drone-satellite a few months ago as four Americans were massacred in the American consulate in Benghazi and could do nothing about it…or at least thought they couldn’t.

In short, Obama’s ego-trip on Libya (population two million LESS than that of New York City) in conjunction with the grand Arab Spring uprisings in 2011, most if not all of which have made their areas worse than ever with the militant jihad-minded Muslims gaining control and thus replacing the then-current despots with worse despots, has proved to be a catastrophic disaster. The actual winner(s): al Qaeda and/or al Qaeda-linked little al Qaedas, the most ruthless of all the Muslim thugs.

The reason for that statement seems obvious enough. The oil refinery that was the scene of the latest kidnapping/torturing/murder of at least 23 hostages is virtually on the border between Libya and Algeria, which shares a border with Mali to its south. The murderers are part of something called AQIM, which actually is the term for al Qaeda in North Africa. The leader of these refinery-butchers is a guy called Mokhtar Belmokhtar, who coincidentally shares a physical condition with Mullah Omar, the head honcho of the Taliban butchers in Afghanistan – each is blind in one eye.

Qaddafi knew his country. Neither Obama nor any of the goodtime girls who pushed for the bloodshed – State Secretary Clinton, UN Ambassador Rice and White House apparatchik Power – knows enough about the Muslim mind to even wonder what a prayer rug is. Obama was so unutterably ignorant that he didn’t know he declared a personal war of seven months, not just days. He thought he could drop a few bombs, leading from behind, and that would do the job. It’s scary to think of a loose cannon like him running the country.

Ostensibly, Belmokhtar was “getting even” with the French government by the hostage-taking for sending troops to Mali to stamp out a then-successful push by al Qaeda to take over that country as part of the Muslim enterprise to take over all of Africa. That may have been true but he offered American hostages in a prisoner-exchange with this country, and that may have been the main reason for the carnage he inflicted on a lot of people, not to mention the destruction, planned or unplanned at the time, of the oil facility, which the Algerian forces prevented by their quick move on Saturday.

So…the president has the blood of countless Libyans, the four killed at Benghazi and the Americans killed in Algeria on his hands, something that could have and would have been averted by anyone with half-sense. He allowed Libya to become an al Qaeda stronghold and training-ground for terrorists…and old Jeremiah was right…the chickens have come home to roost. The reputation of this country as a world power is in tatters. Imagine a nation with 1.5 million troops attacking a nation with 76,000 and beating it to death for seven months! Incredible!

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Presidential Grandstanding

President Obama bestirred himself twice this week to hold forth in public, on 14 January in a “press conference” for which he already had decided who would ask questions, and on 16 January to make a teleprompted speech to a large crowd ginned-up from somewhere (who knows where?) in the middle of the day. At least he was in town, meaning some relief from the huge expense of making Air Force One his personal taxi for yet another “campaign” speech thousands of miles away from the snake-pit.

The theme of the press conference was “We won again.” Obama used it to castigate a do-nothing-or-something-worse House of Representatives republican caucus for daring to challenge him on anything, especially the national debt and the debt-ceiling-limit, making it plain that things would be done his way, i.e., by the printing of money for the conceivable future. His key words over-and-over were “conversation” and “debate,” implying that he would talk but not budge. He also made it, as he would say, “absolutely clear,” that he would use executive orders to straighten out gun-control. This method obviously would also apply to the financial crisis.

The last question was from a lady reporter and had to do with how much the president did or didn’t properly “socialize,” and to remark that he was (gasp) shutting out women from his “inner circle,” the latter giving him a chance to extol the virtues of womanhood and explain how he had, contrarily, placed lots of women in responsible positions but would do even more. The whole exercise – in propaganda mode, of course – was just as trivial as that question, beneath contempt.

Item: Ft. Hood, November 2009, 13 murdered, 30 wounded. No presidential commission. Item: Tucson, January 2011, 6 murdered, 13 wounded. No presidential commission. Item: Aurora, July 2012, 12 murdered, 58 wounded. No presidential commission. Item: Chicago, 2012, 500 murdered by gunfire. No presidential commission. Total: 531 murdered, 101 wounded.

Item: Newtown, December 2012, 26 murdered, 2 wounded. Finally, a presidential commission headed by none other than Obama’s source of gravitas, VP Biden. The speech on 16 January was devoted to this last mass-shooting, making one wonder if the president is class-conscious to the extent of deciding whose lives are important enough to trigger action of some kind…any kind.

In both appearances, Obama made it “absolutely clear” that he was in high dudgeon concerning the Congress, and that he would work his will, apparently through executive orders, some 23 of which he has already signed referencing gun control. The orders are relatively harmless with regard to anything of substance and most of them probably have to do with laws already on the books, though perhaps not well enforced in some places, just as federal immigration laws are not enforced in Arizona, though this administration has shipped unaccounted-for guns to Mexico by the hundreds if not thousands.

To indicate how trivial the orders are is the one having to do with establishing the fact that Obamacare does not preclude a doctor from asking his patients about “guns in their home.” This is another: “Provide incentives for schools to hire school resource officers.” Does anyone know what a “school resource officer” is? Here’s another: “Commit to finalizing mental health parity regulations.” What is “mental health parity?” A “school resource officer” and “mental health parity” are what anyone says they are, making these orders too silly for words.

In other words, the whole exercise was window-dressing but another opportunity to castigate the Congress, which has the only Constitutional power to do anything of substance. The shallowness of this administration was seen in a letter to Congress from the Defense Department in December 2011 describing Major Hasan’s slaughter at Ft. Hood as “workplace violence.” WORKPLACE VIOLENCE! Egad! Since this administration has done nothing about the Benghazi massacre – not charged anyone anywhere anytime – it perhaps believes that it was just WORKPLACE VIOLENCE!

The most contemptible thing the president did concerning his speech was drag children and others from Newtown (with enough grief already) into the audience to be used as pawns in what was obviously a publicity stunt of immense proportions. He could have presented his diatribe and his list of executive orders at the press conference on the fourteenth, but he was without a teleprompter there and therefore a lost ball in the tall weeds. Perhaps, press guru Carney will explain what…uh…uh…er mental…uh…health…er…parity is. Does it mean that the appropriate czar will regulate that everyone have the same IQ? Egad!

The administration types got their noses out of joint over an NRA TV-ad that might have referenced Obama’s daughters (admittedly in poor taste), but Obama “used” those children from Newtown for what had to be a personal ego-trip. Which was worse? The president – Constitutional expert that he is, by his own admission – knows that Congress will do virtually nothing, especially any time soon, so the whole thing will just be another huge photo-op.

The nation deserves better.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

DNC Memorandum #12

From the office of the chairWOMAN, 12 January 2013

***Listen up! There’s been no memo since October because the chairWOMAN has been involved first with the election (no hanging chads in her district this time) and then in consultations with POTUS, VPOTUS, FLOTUS and an occasional dog-sitting duty with FDOTUS. The nasty rumor that she has been politicking for a cabinet position is wrong and she will not do that or dog-sit again. Her second job in the House has also taken some time although her vote is worth nil, so staffers are directed not to ask for special favors since she’s lucky to still have a nameplate, much less any political clout, the republican leadership being Neanderthal in its treatment of women and even most men.

***The rumor that POTUS is planning to create a Department of Gender may or may not be true, such is the secrecy surrounding top-priority matters. The LBGT gang has raised the issue of how many genders there are and of which one the Secretary should be, assuming, of course, that no straight white male, with or without tattoos or nose rings, would be given any consideration. Said to be first in line is Sandra Fluke, who brilliantly made the case before Congress for free condoms. Along this line, a new program is in the works called Obamacondomcare and will soon become a part of Obamacare. Under the provision, a doctor refusing to do an abortion at any fetus-stage will face 30 years in prison, and a daily government-allocation will be made to all women older than five years of two super-slimy-fail-safe-exotic condoms, featuring the two-second automatic-unrolling feature for overwhelming passion-attack panic. Also, a billion dollars will be budgeted for research into converting the pregnancy problem from women to men, who, even in POTUS’s new homosexual marriage-mode, cannot conceive and therefore actually be married.

***Since Senator Kerry has been nominated for State, no mention is to be made of the medals he threw over some fence in 1970 or thereabouts. Staffers are urged to write memos to the media outlets extolling the senator’s virtues, which, if not found or contrived personally, are listed in my office. The senator has said firmly that he did not say smart kids went to school and blockheads went to Iraq back when he considered another run for the presidency, and that he will never say that again.

***Be advised that the theme of the inauguration this month is Homosexual/Diversity Change, the natural sequence vis-à-vis the slogan in 2008, which was the rather simple, mundane Change. This being the case, the Rev. Louie Giglio has been disinvited from giving the benediction at the inauguration because he once preached that unrepentant homosexuality connotes sin. Magnanimously, Attorney General Holder has decided not to have him prosecuted for committing a hate-crime. Giglio is white, so make it clear in all correspondence and news releases that this action by POTUS was not race-based and remind that POTUS also disinvited the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah (God damn America) Wright, an African American, from praying in the 2009 inauguration, though not for the same reason. It just seemed unseemly that the reverend, having already prayed for the destruction of the country, would pray for POTUS (and probably himself) to be spared from the wrath of God.

***In keeping with the theme, Richard Blanco, a homosexual Latino, will read an original poem at the inauguration. The rumor that he has been cautioned about being too explicit is not true but he will not appear in drag in the parade. The fact that Defense Secretary nominee Hagel once said that one who is aggressively gay should not be an ambassador has not been a reason for withdrawing his nomination because not all homosexuals are aggressive, like the ones depicted in Sodom and Gomorrah. Hagel, a combat veteran, probably believes the same thing about homosexuals in the military, but he has already apologized about the ambassador thing and is no doubt backing down on the latter. If asked about this, simply mention that Hagel has evolved just as POTUS evolved regarding homosexuals marrying each other. Do NOT – repeat – DO NOT discuss how far either has evolved from ape-hood vis-à-vis the rest of us. The rumor that Hagel apologized because Holder threatened him with a hate-crime charge is not true and Holder has said he will not do that again.

***The rumor that, in keeping with the theme, POTUS will go to Iowa immediately after the inauguration to perform mass weddings of homosexuals to each other (but only in pairs, no matter the argument for threesomes or more-somes) is not true. Also, The DNC has been asked to suggest someone else to deliver the benediction at the inauguration, with the only firm stipulation that he/she/it (gender of transgenders unknown) be homosexual, in a committed relationship of at least six weeks and not Muslim since Islam sentences homosexuals to death, something of which POTUS, VPOTUS, FLOTUS and maybe even FDOTUS disapprove, though republicans might be another matter since they represent a danger to the nation. POTUS seems to be favoring an Afro-Asian left-handed Lesbian with a twelve-handicap at this point, so be advised. Political correctness is key and diversity must be observed. At least one inaugural ball will be devoted to homosexuals (no guns allowed for protection against jealous partners). Transvestites will be allowed, but anyone wearing stiletto heels will be turned away for obvious reasons.

***POTUS is devising executive orders to cover everything the Congress is or is not considering at present and is, in conjunction with fellow-anarchist and terrorist Bill Ayers, preparing a book on the un-Constitutionality of Congress. When former Illinois governor Blagojevich is released from jail, he and POTUS will prepare a similar book concerning the Supreme Court. Stay tuned…many CHANGES are taking place.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

The WE-WON-KID Rides Again!

It would be hard to imagine a greater display of unmitigated jackassery than was displayed by the president on the afternoon of 31 December, when he assembled a large group (no one seems to know from where but perhaps bused in from one of the projects) in the Executive Office Building in order to stroke his own magnificent ego by lecturing the Congress and demeaning all republicans, especially, to the accompaniment of wild applause. To say that it was a disgusting performance is far too kind. It was an act beneath the dignity and intelligence of a pimply-faced high-school sophomore…contemptible to a degree beyond the nth.

This president has done nothing but campaign for the last four years for a second term, especially during the last 18 months. His post-Christmas flight back to Washington for the current example of overall government ineptitude was totally unnecessary since he has done nothing but say one way or another WE WON, i.e., that he’ll call all the shots and it’s “my way or the highway” for anyone getting in his way.

This latest escapade reminds of 2008, when he and John McCain, both in desperate campaign-mode, dropped everything to get back to Washington and save the country, both of them president-wannabe senators playing to the cameras and microphones. Their presence meant absolutely nothing but the grandstanding was too good to miss.

So…at least for public consumption, the vice president and Senator McConnell took center stage in an effort to save the country. This is another way of saying that Obama is so totally disengaged and uninformed, not to mention intolerably arrogant, that, as usual, somebody has to fill-in for him to get anything done. In the meantime, the citizenry gets an idea of what an empty suit looks like. Add Harry Reed to that equation (no Senate budget passed in three years) and the incompetence in the top of the hierarchy is thick enough to cut with a knife.

The only thing more despicable than a sore loser is an arrogant, taunting winner, especially in an election actually won by the vote of the big-city welfare meccas. His performance on New Year’s Eve was akin to the stupid shenanigans of athletes these days, doing the crotch-hop or chest-banger or jumping in the stands to be pummeled by the silliest fans after doing just what they’re paid well to do, in the first place. All the prez needs to do is get properly tattooed and affix some rings in his ears, nose and anywhere else there’s enough tissue available to be in the same bush-league as the pros, who are even more overpaid than he is.

The rank incompetence of this administration is seen, for instance, in its foreign policy or absence thereof. The prez, exhibiting the predictable arrogance and egoism, made it a point to tell the top leaders of countries in the Middle East to take a hike – Libya, Egypt, Syria, Yemen – with the result being that he has not only alienated those nations but helped deliver them into the hands of the radical jihad groups that threaten the world. Al Qaeda has never been stronger and the Muslim Brotherhood is busily making Sharia law the law of the land in Egypt and Libya and probably soon in Syria. Obama might as well be a fellow-Muslim.

He backed up none of his “get outta Dodge” commands, thus became a paper-tiger, even in the case of Libya, with the weakest military establishment in that part of the world – sorta equal maybe to the Boy Scouts. Result of that inane, insane attack: the Benghazi massacre and a nation virtually run by the radicals and even sending radicals to help Syrians kill each other. What a mess! In the process, he’s made this country into the laughingstock of the world, totally without respect.

Domestically, he’s done just what he did on 31 December – sniped at and insulted the people he despises and hammed it up for the cameras, making speeches constantly, apparently figuring that this is how a president leads…make a lot of noise and then tell the troops to “go get ’em.” Disgusting! This is called “leading from behind” – his term.

After his totally useless trip from Hawaii, he has now returned, thus keeping Air Force One, his personal air-taxi, operational for 36,000 miles and will soon add another 6,000. At $180,000 per hour, this works out to more than $8.6 million for his holiday at taxpayer expense. Add the first ladies $4.3 million for her own personal plane (his/her planes in this administration) and the recession-ridden taxpayer has coughed up nearly $13 million in air-travel costs alone for Hawaiian fun and games. This doesn’t even count the cost of the secret service and all the other add-ons to the holidays.  The ultimate irony: Obamessiah will sign the bill by electronic autopen…didn’t even stay with the troops…loyalty be damned.

Obama constantly uses the term “sacrifice” and makes himself look dumb every time he smirks it, reminding everyone that WE WON!!!! Four more years of this excuse for leadership – disgusting!

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Year-end Lament

(from 2009, but not much has changed.)
Listen, my children, and you shall now hear
Just how it is at the end of this year,
The holiday firs are seen in their glow –
Once Christmas trees, but that weird name must go;
Diversity wields its pure jihad toward God,
It is a religion, worldly and mod,
Look not for Jesus, except at Walmart...
While looking, of course, just fill up the cart.

Never look back at the promises made
A few months ago as the Truth was waylaid
When O and his pols predicted...perforce!...
That those out of work would number, of course,
A mere eight percent and that not for long
As government spent the economy strong;
So...take heart, my dears, just go out and spend...
The prexy said thus...would the bad times all end.

Be glad at this time for a Congress hell-bent
On capping the gases that simply are meant
To make icebergs melt...catch folks unawares
And drown half the country, kill all polar bears;
Be glad that the reps never read cap-and-trade
Since if they had done that they might have been made
To either defeat it or...yes...made to wear
A jacket of strait where dementeds get care.

And think of the climate – especially just now,
This time of the year when to see a snow-plow
Is everyday stuff in much of the land
Where snow heretofore rarely managed to land;
And listen to Al, the guru of gore,
That soon will envelop this land more and more
As humans and beasts all succumb to the cold –
Frozen by warming as temps downward fold.

In case you’ve not noticed, remark now O’s change,
Admittedly, it may just seem a bit strange,
But banking and autos are federalized
And everything everywhere must be downsized;
Put more air in tires and save on your fuel,
And use the right light-bulbs...yeah...don’t be a fool,
The planet is dying, the U.N. has said,
Stop breathing out carbon or Earth will be dead.

At year’s end think not of recession and such –
Obama’s guru of finance said as much...
Recession is over, thus said he to George,
On A-B-C’s Sunday...so go out and gorge,
And simply pretend that the U.S. ain’t broke,
Just use credit cards and be part of the joke...
The veep said bankruptcy is nothing to fear,
Just borrow and spend and be of good cheer.

At year’s end don’t worry...the dollars are sound,
Just go to Beijing, where some billions are found,
And if you want jobs, go to Shanghai and jive,
Those folks make our undies, our shoes...and they thrive;
Don’t look for those things where they used to be made,
The land of the free...ah...but soon cap-and-trade,
Just wire the White House that you’re too big to fail,
Then wait for a check in the very next mail.

At year’s end fret not for old Gitmo soon gone,
Those terrorist dudes will now all face the dawn
In Brooklyn or out on the midwestern plain
Where they can chow down in the land of no pain
And laugh as they strut before TV’s bright light
And spew out their garbage in everyone’s sight,
Praise Allah and jihad...claim judges are dumb –
Like all infidels, with their brains simply numb.

At year’s end don’t worry if you might feel faint,
The Big O and demos are now your new saint,
Their health-care is promised for hangnails or plague
Or bones that are broken or feverish ague;
If you are not young...well...don’t worry at all,
For the lines will not form until they need to call
And simply are told that in six months...about...
They get a knee-joint or a gall bladder out.

At year’s end the parties are just everywhere,
State dinners are normal...quite often the fare,
But take care when crashing, through some staffer’s grace,
You get your brief fame, but with egg on O’s face,
Yet, fret not when questions arise in your fame,
Your name, as like hers, will not suffer some blame,
Executive-priv is the name of the game,
Except when, of course, George the Two is to frame.

At year’s end chill out...don’t be stupid...oh no!
Not like policemen, as described by Big O,
Since he’s got your back from the crib to the grave,
And you from yourself he has promised to save;
And take it from prez, if you’re ever in doubt,
Teleprompters can help, with the stuff they give out,
And don’t hesitate if you’re asked to surmise
About the U.S. – be quick...APOLOGIZE!

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Kerry the Troglodyte

So…it’s official – Senator John Kerry is to be the next State Secretary. But for a colossal blunder in November of 2006 in California, Kerry might have been running against Obama for the democrat nomination instead of desperately politicking now for this new job. This is what Kerry said in California, “You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”

This was Kerry’s backhanded way of calling the troops ignoramuses, but the subject of Iraq also reminds of Kerry’s famous remark during his 2004 unsuccessful presidential campaign that he “was for the war before he was against it” (non-funding it with $87 billion)…or something like that. For that matter, his running mate, John Edwards – whom he deserted in his endorsement of Obama – also voted for the Iraq action, as did then-Senator Clinton.

In a CBS Face the Nation appearance in December 2005, Kerry said, “And there is no reason, Bob [Schieffer], that young American soldiers need to be going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, you know, women, breaking sort of the customs of the – of – the historical customs, religious customs. Whether you like it or not ... Iraqis should be doing that.” Not only did Kerry accuse American GIs of crimes but he actually said that Iraqis ought to be carrying out those crimes, as if that would make the crimes okay. Egad!

This is from the Boston Globe of March 25, 2004, “In a question-and-answer session before a Senate committee in 1971, John F. Kerry, who was a leading antiwar activist at the time, asserted that 200,000 Vietnamese per year were being ‘murdered by the United States of America’ and said he had gone to Paris and ‘talked with both delegations at the peace talks’ and met with communist representatives.” At the time, Kerry was a Navy Reserve officer committing an act of treason (defined as “the betrayal of a trust: TREACHERY”) with the enemy while Senator McCain and others were caged like dogs and tortured in the Hanoi Hilton.

This means that by the time he made that statement (his exact words, “So what I am saying is that yes, there will be some recrimination but far, far less than the 200,000 a year who are murdered by the United States of America …”), Kerry’s comrades/nation had murdered [his word] 1.6 million Vietnamese 1964-71 (or almost 4 percent of the population for 1970), mostly civilians – women, children, and old men. Kerry also said this about American GIs: “They had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads.” In a Meet the Press interview, he said his language was sometimes “excessive.” EXCESSIVE! He’s never offered a scintilla of proof for that wacky accusation. Regarding morality, he betrayed his country in France and lied to Congress in 1971.

In an Op-Ed piece for the New Hampshire Union Leadera few years ago, Kerry said, “Iraq has made America less safe. The terrorists are not on the run. Terrorist acts tripled between 2004 and 2005. Al-Qaida has spawned a decentralized network operating in 65 countries, most of them joining since 9/11.” According to Kerry, terrorists in significant numbers apparently had just started crawling out from under the rocks, but they’ve been crawling all over the world for decades, especially during the 1990s, when his democratic administration seemed totally unable or unwilling, or both, to significantly try to stay their hand.

Witness the WTC, 1993; Somalia, 1993; Riyadh, 1995; Dhahran Khobar Towers, 1996; U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania (at least 257 dead), 1998; USS Cole, 2000, and, finally, 9/11, the terrorist tribute to eight years of Bill Clinton and John Kerry. Did Kerry believe the Girl Scouts were at work in those catastrophes while Bill Clinton was the commander-in-chief? Most recently, Obama attempted to prove that al Qaeda (terrorism) was all but dead when he lied through his teeth about the Benghazi affair…so Kerry should feel at home in his administration.

Of course, if Kerry hadn’t made that stupid remark in 2006 he might have been well-advised to dodge the 2008 race anyway since the “Swift-boaters” would have marshaled humongous forces against him. In only a few months in 2004, they effectively helped blow Kerry completely out of the water on the basis of both his Vietnam-induced conduct (remember tossing the medals over the fence) and his refusal to release the bulk of his military records, including a number of purple-hearts awarded for unbelievably dubious “actions.”

Both Kerry and Hillary Clinton had good things to say about Syria’s President Bashar Assad. They knew (or thought they knew) the territory but they didn’t know squat. Senators Kerry and Dodd (both angling for the big ring in 2008) met with Assad in December 2006. This is what the White House (Bush) had to say: “We discourage the travel of members of Congress to Syria because we believe it undermines the cause of democracy in the region and particularly Lebanon's government,” White House spokesman Blair Jones said (USA Today, December 2006). That was nothing new for Kerry, who had tried – egotistically – to undermine his government while Americans were dying in Vietnam.

On the basis of Obama’s latest subterfuge regarding Benghazi (blaming a movie for the violence in a UN speech long after the massacre), he and Kerry deserve each other. Their levels of intellect and perfidy are about the same.  Kerry's a sick joke.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Guns, Pundits, TV-Gurus

Besides publishing a plethora of letters to the editor, the papers have been full of punditry since the school-shooting in Connecticut. As usual, the arguments have to do with whether or not to ban this or that type of gun, the latest villain being the “assault rifle,” a gun capable of spraying bullets so fast that no one can get out of the way. The murder-by-gun rate has been steadily going down nationwide for some time now, but that doesn’t stop the ban-the-gun crowd from being hysterical.

A local columnist (Lexington Herald-Leader) even dragged Jesus into the discussion in the 22 December Op-Ed section, citing the episode in which Jesus remonstrated with Peter concerning Peter’s violence toward an official of some sort. What he didn’t mention, however, was that only a few hours earlier during the last meal with his disciples, Jesus told them to arm themselves even if they had to sell part of their clothing to do so. Two of them had swords already. They were to be used for self-defense, not aggression.

The Peter episode was a special case having to do with Christ’s mission and nothing to do with circumstances occurring later to his followers. Tradition has it that all but one of the disciples were violently murdered anyway, not surprising since all of them, including Jesus, were slaves to the Roman Empire.

Though he’s done nothing about guns during the last four years (except send hundreds to Mexico, currently unaccounted for), the president held the usual after-the-fact press conference, which induced the predictable next-day result, to wit, gun stores selling more guns than ever. Indeed, Wal-mart announced that after the latest presidential conference, its stores – or at least some of them – just sold-out, at least of some of the types. This fear-mongering from the White House is good for little more than that.

People don’t trust government for much in the first place, and have no desire to be at any kind of mercy of the government, in the second place. People with good sense (lets out a lot of the pundits, if not most of them) understand that the problem is with people, not with guns. Laws mean virtually nothing when self-protection is the issue.

The TV-networks are among the guiltiest participants in fomenting unrest in the “gun-matter” (especially cable) by sensationalizing mass murders to a degree unimaginable among people having a grain of common sense. It’s practically a 24/7 thing among the cable outfits that goes on for days. It’s no wonder there are “copycat killings” as these murderers gain far more than a paltry fifteen minutes of fame.

There have been 484 murders in Chicago this year, but has any cable network documented the funerals as they took place? In Connecticut, however, the cable outfits especially, but the mainstreamers as well, have stayed on the matter like a dog on a bone, even to being on-scene for funerals, thus invading the privacy of these bereaved people to an extent that connotes gross insensitivity.

I don’t watch these things to any extent but I surfed over to CNN the other day and Anderson Cooper was interviewing a family of one of the victims so I surfed away only to surf back a while later and he was still at it…with the same family. It’s a sort of “Barbara Walters syndrome” – stay at it until you get everybody crying or give up and go on to the next potential weeper. This is disgusting. It’s sort of like asking a survivor what kind of tree he’d like to be if he wasn’t a mourner. Do these million-dollar TV-gurus have any common sense or sense of propriety at all?

So…the president has appointed yet another commission to “study” the problem and has even appointed the vice president to whip it into shape…sort of like telling a sailor to try spitting into the wind. Besides, the recommendations of various Commissions mean nothing to him. The members of the Bowles-Simpson Commission concerning the recession and something to do about the sad state of financial affairs in this country might as well have gone to Philadelphia. For Obama, it’s as if they never had a meeting.

Vice President Biden’s commission will meet and eat, produce a document, and everyone will have a warm-fuzzy feeling. The prez will pay no attention to it. Life will go on…sadly for many, but it will go on. Nothing much will change the statistics.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Cruiser-Caper-Corruption

Corruption and/or outright rip-offs of the taxpayers on all levels of government are legendary in this state and city though to probably no greater extent than in other states. The recent appointing by the governor of his constant thorn-in-the-flesh, the State Senate president, to a judgeship and golden parachute pension-wise, as well as two other opposition senators previously given the same treatment, is a good example, though this bit of skullduggery has backfired so far. This was blatant corruption.

Teachers and law-enforcement/safety personnel can retire in their early fifties and draw full pensions for the rest of their lives, now close to an average of 30 years. Nearly a third of all retired Lexington policemen and firefighters have added to their already sizeable pensions a “disability” enhancement, meaning extra thousands. The people responsible to the taxpayers for negotiating contracts with these people or their unions know a good vote when they see it and, believing the state’s pockets have no bottoms, give away the store, something that can’t happen in industry, in which competition requires a realistic accounting.

The latest example in Lexington is a case in point. A policeman arrested a lady a few months ago for cause but apparently decided to let her forego the rap in exchange for a “quickie” in the back seat of his cruiser. She must have thought it over later, got mad, and accused him of rape, of which he has just been cleared in a trial but convicted on lesser stuff. He was on duty, apparently unhurt in the “payoff” and the whole lurid mess was consensual.

Latest news: This policeman, on the force for just ten years, has just resigned and filed for a disability pension, which means that, if awarded, will grant him up to 75% of his current wage, untaxed, for the rest of his life. Apparently, he’s just discovered this terrible injury acquired on duty though he was suspended last July and hasn’t been on duty since then. Most likely, it will be a back injury (the usual), but probably not incurred in the little escapade in the cruiser.

Based on the 2010 record, this policeman – on the basis of a 40-hour week – earned about $70,720, not accounting for overtime. If he gets the 75% rip-off, he can collect over $53,000, untaxed, until he dies, meanwhile working at anything else he chooses. If he’s stuck with the lower limit of 60%, he will get only get about $42,000 or so until he cashes in.

The odds are, though it will take a few months, that he will collect, though he was physically able to do his job (not injured, in other words) on the night he decided guilt or innocence in the backseat of his cruiser. One can only wonder if a sexually transmitted disease would qualify him for such a great pension, an attack of gonorrhea, for instance, on the 60% level, or (gasp) syphilis, that might require the 75% payout each month.

Sound harsh? Of course, it does…until one considers that this was a grown man, an officer of the law and apparently not suffering unduly. More to the point, the taxpayers should not be subjected to this kind of larceny. With the right amount of money spread around, most anything can be bought and sold in government, the place where the treasury belongs to everyone, meaning that it belongs to no one and is subject to being rifled at will.

The corruption/rip-off infiltrates every aspect of state endeavor. Just recently, two assistant football coaches (called coordinators but they’re just assistants) at the university were awarded yearly contracts for $550,000 and $500,000. The head coach makes millions per year. None of the men have anything to do with academics, supposedly the main concern of the university, where a newcomer to the faculty might knock down $60,000 or so if he/she is lucky.

Over the last considerable time, people in the far reaches of the county have been paid mega-millions for promising not to “do business” on their land, though their farms are businesses and though both Planning-Zoning and the City Commission already completely control land-use. This is a classic example of rip-off, with the taxpayers being the collective patsy. Disgusting!

Stay tuned for the results of the “cruiser caper” and potential injuries.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Bastogne, December 1944

Depending on the perspectives people have, there are many opinions regarding the so-called turning point of World War II. Some say the war in the Pacific was turned around at Midway in the spring of 1942 when the core of the Japanese navy (its carriers) was defeated, never mind that that horrifically bloody conflict lasted through August of 1945, when the A-bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Others will point to D-Day, 06 June 1944, when the bloody, costly invasion by the Allies of the European continent at Normandy took place. Still others will claim that the matter was decided when allied fighters could escort bombers all the way to the targets mainly in Germany and back to their bases in England. Before that, it was considered practically a miracle if a bomber crew lived through 25 missions. Allied fighter pilots made short work of the German-Luftwaffe threat, the result being the absolute devastation of German efforts to manufacture war-making materiel as German cities were laid waste.

It's doubtful that any one thing can be determined to be the turning point, but a significant effort started on 16 December 1944 that eventuated in heroism defined to the nth degree. Remarked this month on its 68th anniversary, it was called the Battle of the Bulge and centered in large part around a city in Belgium called Bastogne. Allied troops and commanders, mostly American, were taken entirely by surprise in the Ardennes area on the German-Belgian border when the Germans mounted a last-ditch offensive, code-named Greif, with 38 divisions during what some termed the "coldest winter in memory." The ensuing battle was by far the worst in terms of lives and materiel lost during the European campaign. If the weather had not made flying impossible for days, the affair would not have caused the terrible problem it did, since by December of 1944 the German Luftwaffe (air force) had practically ceased to be, giving the Allies complete control of the skies.

It was during this campaign that American General McAuliffe, when offered a chance by the Germans to surrender his badly outnumbered army at Bastogne, simply replied, "Nuts." Until that German offensive began, it seemed that it was only a matter of time before the Allies reached Berlin. Indeed, there had been talk of Americans going home by Christmas. All that changed overnight when the surprisingly well-equipped German hordes descended upon the Ardennes. The tide was turned eventually, not least because of a break in the flying weather and the advance of General Patton's Third Army, and the German forces were driven all the way back to where they started by late January 1945, but the toll in lives and other resources was horrendous. Of the 81,000 American casualties, 19,000 were killed-in-action and another 23,554 captured. The most horrible atrocity in the European theater also happened during the battle when 86 American prisoners were massacred by German soldiers at Malmedy. This was reminiscent of the infamous Bataan Death March of 1942 in the Philippines, when Japanese soldiers brutalized and killed American prisoners in the early stages of the war.

Was the Battle of the Bulge a turning point? Of course it was, just as the other incidents mentioned above were turning points. The Germans meant to drive all the way through Belgium and Holland to the North Sea, thus splitting Allied forces and gaining access to ports. Their attack was a total surprise, and they were aided by weather so bad that it constituted, on its own, an enemy almost as deadly as the gunfire, with deep snows and frigid temperatures a constant threat simply to survival, much less success against the enemy. It is to the eternal credit of the men who fought there that they would not be denied victory against the weather and the enemy. Most of the American GIs who fought there are dead now. Their average age at the time was said to be twenty-two. Thousands were just teenagers. The nation owes them gratitude so profound as actually to be impossible to comprehend or adequately express, to say nothing of the fact that free nations the world over were delivered by the Americans in the Ardennes in December-January 1944-45. In their honor:

Bastogne

Isaiah 1:18

The scarlet and the snow…the crimson and the wool
Isaiah seemed to know - but not this fiendish ghoul -
This battlefielded ghoul that graced a frigid hell
Saw each a bloody fool, whose life it would expel;
But, not unlike God's seer, it stared down years of time
When it would leech - as here - young blood while in its prime;
The scarlet, deadly sin…not bleached in falling snow…
And wool, with life within, dripped crimson - friend and foe.

The scarlet and the snow…the crimson and the wool
Isaiah had to know - but not a tyrant fool
Who reasoned not with God…but came, instead, to kill,
Who made his minions plod toward graves that thousands fill,
Who was incarnate sin…the scarlet, crimsoned wool…
His god - himself within - though simply Satan's tool;
But, in that icy hell…where tens of thousands fell,
No tyrant fool would dwell - the proud knew all too well.

The scarlet and the snow…the crimson and the wool
Isaiah could but know God reasons with no fool;
So, scarlet ruled the day…and crimson ruled the night,
As sin engaged full sway…the snow and wool to blight;
Men's scarlet-crimson gushed, as - brave - they fought to death,
Their screams of pain not hushed…till final, rasping breath;
But, right would win the day sin's scarlet-crimson spawned,
When wrong was made to pay…and hope, again, had dawned.

The scarlet and the snow…the crimson and the wool
Isaiah - did he know? - about each frozen pool
Of red that stained the earth, when warmed and gone to ground,
Of blood that gave rebirth…pure wool in earthly mound,
Where buglers sound the dirge for freedom-fighter's loss,
Where mourners yet emerge…from fields of star and cross.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

The soldiers - friend and foe - from summer years have gone…
And where, then, did they go? - they went to cold Bastogne.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Griever-in-Chief

The president expressed remorse
When acting as Griever-in-Chief,
The murders at the school, of course,
Provided need for some relief;
It was a heinous crime – obscene –
Dead kindergarteners so pure,
A gory, bloody, numbing scene –
Young lives so sure they were secure.

Their teachers, too, were shot outright –
One minute, normal…next one, dead,
Townspeople viewed that gory sight
And traded Christmas cheer for dread;
And, as is always sure the case,
The questions came forth instantly…
So, where was God when this took place?
Well, God was there…illegally?

The president did what he could
And sort of blamed society
But folks collectively just would
Not launch a heartless killing-spree;
No one could get into the head
Of him who perpetrated death,
Not least because he, too, was dead,
He brought about his own last breath.

Was shooter evil or insane?
No one will ever know, of course,
But blame, remorse among the sane
Are normal as a prime recourse;
Such massacres are nothing new,
On street-corners they happen, too,
Since as from when mankind was new,
Descendents all its flaws renew.

The president might have a point
Called Culture Shock…with his amen,
Since time is surely out of joint
When men, he said, may marry men,
Since that bespeaks perversion, coarse,
Society can ill-afford,
Why should he not expect, of course,
Perversions all across the board?

Or, when he staged his massacre
Attacking Libya…and for what?
In no way could a threat occur
From that poor nation’s polyglot;
His was a massacre of choice,
Bombs raining down on children there,
For seven months did he give voice
To grief for Libyans dying there?

And so it goes with massacres,
A nation, world inured to them,
Collective wail when each occurs,
With grief cried for the gross mayhem;
But mark it well – when nations fail
To follow God’s expressed decrees,
There will be terror, grief, travail –
Griever-in-Chief should warn of these.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Climate Contrivance

It has been interesting recently to watch the TV newscasts (the “mainstream” ones) with regard to the terrible threat of manmade global warming, which by people who have bothered to pay attention know to be a hoax. The latest ones noticed in this corner have been foisted by NBC and ABC, featuring unbelievable “scare” prognostications. On one network, for instance, the coastlines around Florida and the East Coast were shaded in red to show the extent of the inundation of sea water occasioned by the melting Arctic ice floes or the melting ice in Greenland.

In one of the Newscasts (ABC, I believe) someone sort of slipped up and managed what Shakespeare would have called an “aside” by almost whispering something about what must have been thought a strange anomaly, i.e., the ice buildup in Antarctica…in other words, the re-freezing of melted Arctic ice, thus neutralizing the threat to the “red zones.” He quickly recovered and went on explaining the dire consequences of operating cars and heating houses.

It’s inconceivable that in this administration there’s no one actually cognizant of the way things are, ergo, there’s an agenda that has to be advanced notwithstanding the facts, not least the one that there’s been no warming in at least the last 12 or so years, whether considered manmade or otherwise.

Anecdotal stuff is all the rage now, everything from a hot July this year to Sandy the hurricane, as if anomalies have never occurred or as if anything can be considered an anomaly in the first place. Modern records go back virtually no distance compared to the age of the earth, as if anyone actually has an idea about that.

Take Chicago on Christmas day: In 1982, the temperature rose to 64 degrees; in 1983, the temperature fell to –17, a differential of 81 degrees. Does that prove anything? No! The hottest decade on record was 1936 – at least in this state, Kentucky. So what? It was 70 degrees here yesterday…proved nothing, especially since November was unusually cold.

According to the University of Illinois Cryosphere Today data based on that of a number of agencies such as NASA, the Southern Hemisphere Sea Ice Area is growing, as it has been exponentially since 1984. It reached a record in 2007 and is currently (September) nearly 2 million sq. km. greater than its lowest volume in 1986.

The current projection is that a new record for southern sea-ice volume will be reached in 2013. This is the entirely credible data that’s ignored by the media, which seems to be a propaganda arm of the administration, President Obama having announced his “fear” of manmade global warming often enough, not to mention his promise in 2008 of bankrupting energy-producing agencies and making electricity costs “skyrocket,” something happening in Kentucky (among lowest energy-cost states) now as plants are being regulated out of existence – this after all the millions spent for years on “scrubbing” emissions.

When the Gore-Obama combine grabbed the Nobel peace prizes for 2007 and 2009, respectively, apparently for warring successfully against warming and accomplishing the goal of cool peace, U.S. citizens were being frightened about everything from losing Coney Island and the Miami beaches to the extinction of (gasp) the polar bears, four of which actually died of drowning though Gore warned of their apparent starving to death (I never read the book or saw much of the film).

Before Obama could collect his million or so and teleprompt himself as savior of the planet in Copenhagen and Oslo in 2009, The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and its partners in crime, not to mention robbing Gore of the whole prize in 2007, were thoroughly discredited by their own electronic admissions, considering themselves intellectual guru-giants vis-à-vis climate but lacking even the elementary knowledge that e-mails never die.

In the final analysis, it could be said that climate-science, while incredibly useful but only if people pay attention and act thereon, is among the least understood of the disciplines, not because of brilliant scientists who recognize scientific discipline itself, but because of the totally undisciplined amateurs or agenda-drivers such as the president and Gore look-alikes, who intend to prostitute it for use in attaining personal goals.

The world is not overheating – North becoming a bit warmer, South becoming a bit colder (a tie) – although folks in Greenland might appreciate farming again, as they did a few centuries ago.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark