Remedial Kindergarten?

Latest news from the Kentucky Department of Education is that 51% of kindergarteners are unprepared for first grade, not surprising since graduates of Head Start read no better by the fourth grade than children who did not participate in Head Start, the government program launched decades ago to prepare the most disadvantaged youngsters (always known as those on “free-lunch”) to perform as well as all other children. This latest announcement admits that Kentucky kindergarten joins Head Start in being a failure, with its only good feature being that the Head Start gang is well-fed.

Those even mildly long-in-the-tooth remember that public-school kindergarten did not exist back in the day. Children simply started first grade when they satisfied the age requirement. It was assumed that they had had no education up to that point and that they would be taught the basics at age six by a teacher trained to handle them. Largely depending upon the age cutoff-date for entrance (six by maybe June 30, September 30 or December 31), they just “went to school.” Public-school graduates in those years managed the best schools in the world, created the greatest economy and directly saved the world in 1941-45, as well as later during the “Cold War,” when communists tried to enslave everyone else.

I could have sent my children to kindergarten but opted against that, figuring they would be better off at home, profiting from the efforts of my wife and me (especially her) to prepare them for first grade and avoiding the regimentation that would from then on set their schedules. Admittedly, many children didn't get much preparation in the time-period of my childhood (the 1930s, when many parents just finished eight or fewer grades) but they “caught up” in public schools in which education was far more serious than it seems to be now. Discipline was a huge part of the process, with learning about the only concern and fun-and-games left to youngsters to design at recess themselves, whether indoors or outdoors.

In those days, school personnel had to do with learning—teaching, not social engineering. Childcare was virtually unheard of since most mothers were homemakers and kindergarten held little importance. Now, government—especially relating to schools—is also considered the primary babysitter and a childcare agency, politically correct but educationally a disaster area. Children are under governmental care from early morning until the end of “after-school experiences,” in very late afternoon, with virtually no time to give structure to their own existences.

Schools have become a huge and grossly expensive part of the welfare system...drop-off spots for the kids while their parents do their thing – make money. A school “snow-day” is a disaster for parents since it sticks them with the inconvenience of making arrangements for oversight of their children. Two-earner households are the rule now, not the exception.

Old folks like me are told that “times have changed” and I need to understand that. The institutions of school and family have substantially changed. Whereas once people were satisfied to adjust lifestyle to resources, they now adjust everything to lifestyle, including finances and the educating of their children. This nation lags behind even some poor countries in education as a result. The cream will always rise to the top educationally, but the masses of students suffer because their parents like it this way.

In my student-days, desks were bolted to the floor in rows. For male teachers, it was coat-and-tie. I taught for some five years in the 1950s and that's how I dressed to teach math. Women teachers dressed modestly in nice clothes, both dress-codes remarking the respect given to education...something then endemic to churchgoing. Now—at least in the classroom-shots on TV—both male and female teachers look sloppy...just like most of the students. For story-telling, I might have sat occasionally on the floor in first grade, but never after that. Teachers are not supposed to be “one of the gang.”

Accompanying the failure of kindergarten is this latest educational nonsense—squandering money to finance education for four-year-olds – pre-kindergarteners, providing an opportunity to let students fail twice before they start first grade. This endeavor is priority on both the state and national levels. The president and the governors never let an opportunity to mention education pass in the speeches third parties write for them. They can't even pass speech-writing 101 and they whine about the failure of kindergarten. Egad!

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

The Redtape Letters

The Screwtape Letters by the noted British author C.S. Lewis is one of my favorite books. The long letters were written by a man, Screwtape, for the purpose of instructing his nephew, Wormwood, in how to evangelize an ordinary man against God and into following Satan. I’ve been working on a book probably titled The Redtape Letters, including letters from a man, Redtape, instructing his nephew, Gullible, vis-à-vis politics/society and how to guide the nation into socialism. Here is a letter dealing with the so-called Income Inequality sort of gap:

My Dear Gullible,

You'll pardon me for being a bit disappointed at the mention in your last letter that you've been listening to some of those awful redneck conservative talk-shows on radio and even spent some time viewing that arch-conservative TV network that claims to be fair and balanced. Don't be fooled by the propaganda vomited from those sources. The purveyors of conservative views are to be pitied for their simple-mindedness, such as when they claim redistribution of wealth will kill the economy. It will, of course, but you need to understand that in so doing it will nudge the nation closer to Force-status. We can be glad that the so-called mainstream media—far larger than the redneck media—are supporting the president in his redistribution plan. Actually, those media nutcases are the simpletons but, except for the true believers in the Force, think they have a clue. You are still new to the cause and I'm sure you're among friends who have come from conservative homes and are therefore brainwashed into believing that the “level playing field” concept is screwy. It is, of course, but that's the whole point – screwing up everything as soon as possible so that the drive into Force-hood accelerates. In the meantime, don't try to convert these “friends.” Just avoid them like the plague. You will find people much closer to our philosophy on the faculty, so listen to those folks.

Unless you've been in a cave lately (or high on mary jane—little joke there) you've been hearing and reading a lot about the “income inequality” that exists worldwide but especially in this country. This has become virtually the mantra lately vis-a-vis the administration. Some senseless wags—the rich, in other words—have made a lot of noise about a worldwide war being waged against the wealthy, presumably by the poor folks, as if they had any ammunition even if they had economic or military weapons to make the fight, which they don't. The president has vowed to bring the rich folks to their knees financially and give the proceeds to the poor, about everyone else not in the Republican Party. This comes at an embarrassing time since the big news lately is the fact that half of all the members in Congress are millionaires and—even worse—that the president is, too. So...the president and most Congresspersons are not anxious for income inequality to be a virtual mantra. The president, rich Cabinet members and rich Congresspersons can take care of themselves, however, since they can pass laws, especially around midnight on Fridays, that will exempt them from the strictures other mean-spirited millionaires and billionaires will face as the circumstance is resolved. The president outlawed the term “terrorism” (though he forgot right after the Benghazi Massacre and repeated it when some dullard put in a teleprompted speech) and replaced it by “man-caused disaster,” so the thinking now is replacing “Income Inequality” with something like “Man-Caused Repossession.”

The facts are fairly immutable—about one percent of the world's population owns nearly half of the world's assets, leaving the other 99% what's left. In some places, that's not very much. In this country, the middle class feels little if any pain because the wealthy use their money to set up businesses that create jobs. As long as the dimwits can work and make enough to eat, have a car, spend 30 years paying for a house and have a flat-screen TV they can be mollified. So... they must be made to understand that they are victims of Man-Caused Repossession by the wealthy (mostly republicans), assuming they might stop watching the Reality shows long enough to pay attention. The lower class gets a hand-up from the government – think the ballyhooed single mothers, who get child support, food stamps, subsidized housing, child-care, cell-phones and enough cash to have what other folks have to work hard to earn. The significant others who show up occasionally for a good time and a go at another impregnation that leads to more babies to more assistance...you get the picture, I'm sure. Don't worry about them.

In the Force, confiscation is the weapon of choice...or make that the tool for making the playing-field level in our society. The term weapon is so NRA-ish. The way to dilute and eventually destroy man-caused repossession is to raise the taxes much higher on everyone who earns money—especially the rich although everyone will have to ante-up eventually—and give the proceeds to the middle and lower classes in all the ways that are possible. This will lead to class warfare, which, of course, is necessary to inculcating the Force. The president is in the process now of getting this done, i.e., educating all classes as to the rightness of having the government be Robin Hood...stealing from the rich and redistributing their wealth to the middle class and poor. This has already been started in the Congress in its caving on the tax-the-rich scheme the president introduced, raising their federal taxes to nearly 40%.

But this is just the beginning. The hard problem will be in educating everyone, especially in the middle class (changing their mindset from victim-hood occasioned by the rich), into believing they, too, owe what they earn to people who are wise enough not to work. Pensioners and the sick are not included in that group, of course. As the citizens all get fed-up with the system, they will wage war against each other (or each others' class), with the producers deciding that it's not worth the effort any longer. As the economy reflects this (going into the tank), the government, led by folks like you and me, hopefully, will become the source of every good thing. Disgruntled citizens may have to be subjected to physical force. This is why the president insisted in 2008 that there be a national police force equal in strength to all the military forces combined. In his current lame-duck session, this may be hard to accomplish but by the grapevine I've heard that this force will be open to any military person upon his discharge, with a hefty bonus involved. This is the main reason that the president is removing troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year—fresh trained-troops in the form of returnees since there are fewer and fewer jobs for them to get at home. The actual unemployment rate is now at 13.1% (Labor Dept. Statistic) so you can see what I mean. Please don't mention the latter statement to anyone because that number means “Great Depression” stuff. This smacks of the propaganda put out by devotees of the enemy, i.e., that inducing privation/fright produces a drive of the population toward communal stuff, anathema to capitalistic tenets of the faith. The enemy is right...that's why he is to be feared.

I hope you are hard at it in community-organizing in your spare time. In the neighborhoods of the affluent, organize against the president. In the poor neighborhoods, organize against everyone. This may sound as if actual beliefs don't matter. They don't, except that this approach accelerates class-warfare, the key to success.

As ever,
Redtape

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Coed Rape...Preventable?

Rape is in the news again, this time with POTUS and VPOTUS weighing in on the subject, appearing together recently insisting that college men should be more respectful of college women and not go around raping them. Could one espy a nudge-nudge-wink-wink in their performance? The subject was rape on college campuses.

A report came from the White House Council on Women and Girls, which issued this statement: “No one is more at risk of being raped or sexually assaulted than women at our nation's colleges and universities.” A White House report highlights a stunning prevalence of rape on college campuses, with 1 in 5 female students assaulted while only 1 in 8 student victims report it, according to the Associated Press. One wonders how the one-in-five assaults is determined if seven-of-eight do not report assaults.

A few months ago, the prevailing statistics had to do with rape in the military—3,374 reported in 2012, with 238 convictions in military courts, but also 26,000 other assaults (including groping, etc.) that were not reported, an increase of 37% from 2011. Ostensibly, the episodes were not reported for fear of losing rank or location or whatever. One wonders at the determination of 26,000 assaults if they weren't reported—all smoke-and-mirror stuff, or is there documentation of the undocumented somewhere?

The president appointed a task force to investigate the instant matter and gave it 90 days to structure solutions. The report said campus sexual assaults are fueled by drinking and drug use that can incapacitate victims, often at student parties at the hands of someone they know. Surprise, surprise! Will the task-force recognize this circumstance as a reference-point for beginning its work, or will this become another useless exercise mostly ignoring the obvious but making POTUS and VPOTUS look concerned?

Sixty or so years ago, college/university administrations acted as surrogate parents for women students, about the time early “boomers” became of age and began running things. Girls signed in and out of dormitories in the evening and were required to observe curfews. The reason was simple, to wit, guarding against rape and other things such as pregnancies and STDs. No such demands were made of men since they were considered able to take care of themselves. Has anyone heard of a White House Council on Men and Boys?

Women's-lib came on line, insisting that the “liberated woman” was the paradigm for all girls/women—worldly wise and out to match the men, hormone-for-hormone. Stupid, cowed college administrators/boards installed coed-dorms and told the young people to become—yeah...worldly wise. Doing away with these university-sanctioned brothels (smelling of pot, of course) would greatly help but that won't happen because women would lose the hormone-war. Additionally, the fraternities invite the ladies to their orgies, allegedly spike their drinks, and create ecstasy with Ecstasy, the date-drug.

There are no curfews now or other rules. Women can roam the campus, town, frat-houses or bars at will 24/7, invite their studs in and drink themselves into oblivion. If, after a wild party or dorm-room caper, a girl becomes angry at whatever she suspects happened by whatever predatory male was around (if she remembers) she can scream rape and even get a rape kit, which will prove nothing but the obvious – intercourse...his word against hers. Or...she can just chalk it up to fun-and-games and forget about it, i.e., no report...those seven out of eight, in other words.

This isn't to make light of actual rape, a crime that should be prosecuted intensely, with the convicted animals receiving the stiffest possible punishment. It's to show the hypocrisy of officials who are too dumb to get it or dare not cross the “diversity red line” set in the sand by the rabid women's organizations, made up of nutcases who believe in unisex and deny that women need protection and are not superior morally to men, though by their actions often invite intimacy, whether drunk or sober.

According to USA Today, Obama said, “This is not an abstract problem that goes on in other families or other communities. ... It affects every one of us.” Well, no. It affects parents, like himself, who may or may not do everything—tangibly and morally—to see that their daughters and sons don't “go with the flow” but use common sense—even when the scared administrators won't—to guard against being alley cats or decent people.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Chauvinism or Common Sense

A certain amount of chauvinism resides in most men, whether or not admitted (women, too, but never remarked). The most open-minded, polite combat-vet might feel a bit awkward taking orders from a lady whose most important decision of the day centered on eye-shadow. The distaffers have been cleared for combat by the prez, whose most important decision of the day might be lobster or goulash on Air Force One, but since he knows nothing about combat, give him some slack.

A concerted attack of chauvinism is another matter, wherein the attacked might insist that this nation is not ready for a female president. That ultra-politically-incorrect charge so disconcerts the social engineers and diversity-mongers that they scream “J'accuse,” regarding bias, gender-discrimination and even (gasp) racism, the latter because women themselves have identified their “discrimination” with that of minority African Americans though they form a majority of the population in both races and can vote any abuse of men they want – enough to make one wonder if suffrage was all that great nearly a hundred years ago. Or, one might even wonder if the nation is ready for a male president...would a female orangutan be better, for instance? The recently reelected president (having “evolved,” his term) has okayed marriage for homosexuals, personally attempting to rescind laws of nature and laws/constitutions of the majority of states. An executive order is a dangerous thing in the wrong hands, legislating when Congress allegedly won't. Just talking about marijuana, as Obama did recently, was a mistake, but claiming it less damaging than alcohol...WEIRD! Second-generation boomer and former user by his own account.

Women are gradually taking over some of the nation's most important institutions such as in education, the military and the courts. Not long ago, the naïve claimed that as they enter national leadership women—with much higher moral standards than men—would make everything “all better.” However, they are seen now as corrupt as men, if not more so. Hillary Clinton, for instance, is a compulsive liar and opportunist, a bad bet to answer that famous “3:00 a.m. call.” Think Benghazi. Concerning the sexual peccadilloes well-documented vis-a-vis men, people seem to forget that “it takes two to tango” and that the “oldest profession” was/is/will be operated by the distaff side. Selling the body is as low as it goes.

Women are being placed in combat not because they are or will be good at breaking things and killing people but in order for them to attain the highest ranks, in which they can do real damage. Studying in war college is not the same as confronting the enemy eyeball-to-eyeball. Putting fighting men at risk because female colleagues, collectively physically weaker, can't cut it in battle is to make political cannon fodder of both genders.

No one—male or female—should be president if lacking in actual military experience, not necessarily combat though that would be preferable. With the exception of Clinton, all the presidents back to FDR had military experience, much of it in battle. Former Defense Secretary Gates and former Joint Chiefs Chairman Mullen strongly objected to Obama's “Libya adventure” in 2011. Obama didn't listen and the rest is history—bloodshed of innocent Libyans over seven months and the ruthless terrorizing/destruction of a sovereign nation, not to mention the Benghazi Massacre in 2012 in which four Americans died needlessly, occasioning the BIG LIE by Obama, Clinton and UN Ambassador Rice, now head of the NSA.

One risks the charge of bigotry or racism or gender discrimination or just plain meanness when insisting that the president should be a man with military experience, if for no other reason than that he is mean enough to act militarily when necessary and is more likely to have the proper knowledge in doing so successfully. It is not intellectually elitist to suggest that the nation is what it is primarily due to male leadership over hundreds of years under the auspices of the elements of what some call “Western Civilization.” That's “just the facts, ma'am.”

None of this denigrates women, who are substantially smarter than men in many areas. They already out-populate men in universities and have distinguished themselves in the fields of medicine, sciences and the arts, while matching male corruption/ignorance in politics. It's merely to remark that there's no such thing as unisex. There are differences in the genders—biological, mental, emotional. Leadership is too important to squander on either the uninitiated or the physically/mentally weak.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Post-Secondary PTSD

In a recent op-ed claimed to be signed by the higher-education pooh-bahs in Kentucky public institutions and the Kentucky Council on Post Secondary Education, attention was drawn to higher education's grievous financial short-shrift by government especially since 2008, requiring immediate action. This is true but the only relief being seriously considered is revenue-enhancement via casinos. Notwithstanding high-flown legislative rhetoric earmarking this revenue to education, it will go into the general fund, as it should.

Education professionals—multitudes embarrassingly non-essential/overpaid—seem not to understand that much can be done institutionally to help relieve the problem. Streamlining the system is a must. Liberal Arts is the ideal approach (Western Civilization) but many of its requirements are often unnecessary. An adequate education can be gained in three years for most any field involving technical rather than “artistic” skills and training. Electrical engineers don't need Chaucer or even (gasp) a foreign language. English is already foreign for about half of all college applicants anyway.

Not all high school grads should go to college, as education gurus insist. Entrance requirements should be stiffer, perhaps furnishing more incentive to actually educate students in public schools instead of merely exposing them to social engineers, thus reducing university faculty numbers, saving boatloads of salaries and perks. Notwithstanding the disappearing of unions to gain leverage against employers, skilled workers and even those in manual labor are often well paid...think Toyota, for instance.

The state's eight public universities subsidize their sports programs with a total of almost $50 million a year from their schools' general fund budgets, which largely rely on state tax money and students' tuition and fees, according to the Herald-Leader of 01 April 2012, a scandal of immense proportions. Actually, six of those institutions incur that expense, squandering an average of over $8 million per year each. Scholarship athletes get free rides even if they can't write three consecutive grammatically correct sentences while deserving scholars head for McDonalds or drown themselves in debt.

Whole departments could be dispensed with. There used to be departments of women's studies but now they're called Gender & Women's Studies. This is from the UK web-site: “Spring 2014 Gender and Women's Studies Undergraduate Courses: Sex and Power; Gender and Popular Culture; Crossroads of Race, Gender, and Class; Gender Across the World: Human Rights in Film; Intro to Feminist Theorizing; Introduction to Queer Theory; Issues in GWS: Sex, Science, Society; Senior Seminar in GWS: Capstone; Women in Islam; Gender Politics in Modern Chinese Literature and Culture; Literary Encounters: Women Behaving Badly; Sexuality Education; Contemporary Russian Women’s Literature and Undergraduate Research in Gender and Women’s Studies: Independent Study.”

There's also a doctoral program at UK for those who want to make GWS studies a self-perpetuating profession. From the program's web-site: “The PhD program in Gender and Women's studies at the University of Kentucky aims to train cutting-edge scholars of feminist, gender, and sexuality studies.” Sex may be important in GWS-world but apparently grammar isn't. The word should have been “in,” not “of,” regarding the studies unless the statement meant that all the scholars actually have a gender and are feminist in philosophy and very interested in sex experiments. Fortunately, there's no Men's Department of Studies to waste money.

Spring 2014 Course Offerings in African American and Africana Studies at UK: “Inequalities in Society; African American History 1865-Present; History of Subsaharan Africa; Major Black Writers; History of Jazz; Geography of Mid East/N Africa; Race/Sprts in America; Special Topics in African American Studies: Black Greek Letter Organizations; Special Topics in African American Studies: Languages in African American Societies; Special Topics in African American Studies: Pidgins and Creoles; Independent Readings/Research in African American Studies; Race & Ethnic Relations; Education in Culturally Diverse Society; Theories, Perspectives, Trends and Issues in Multicultural Education; Multicultural Psychology; Black American Literature.” Sounds like liberal boilerplate. Fortunately, there are no departments in Caucasian, Latino, Native-American or Asian Studies.

These useless departments (okay...I'm both racist and chauvinistic) are replicated throughout the other institutions—a huge waste. Elaborate Physical Education Departments could be axed, muscle-building not being a responsibility of academia, and the rules of volley-ball don't matter much in the real world. The Great Recession is in its seventh year and revenues will reflect that. Post-graduate education gurus should take notice and consider overhauling/downsizing before whining, especially since the governor has just proposed bushwhacking it by another 2.59%. Wringing 10% out of institutional budgets should not be hard, especially when chartered planes are used to transport athletes to the far reaches of the nation. It takes about $230,000 just to outfit a football team but that's not even half of what UK pays its offensive and defensive coordinators each. Disgusting!

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Education Equity or Waste

In an op-ed piece of 13 January appeared this question: “Will groups like the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce; banking; businesses, including equine, agriculture and coal, step up and put aside their special agendas, pressuring state government to do the right thing?” [about education]. The answer is NO. In the column was this statement: “Gov. Steve Beshear and the 2014 General Assembly have an opportunity to get us back on track. The tax structure of Kentucky needs to be changed, pure and simple.” This is ho-hum stuff whenever the legislature meets and the governor pontificates...endlessly.

The tax structure may need to be changed but change can be claimed for everything the state does, not just concerning education – nothing new there. The biggest tax increase in the state's history at the time occurred in 1990 in behalf of education...the Kentucky Education Reform Act, which also included mountains of pork, necessary for passage of most everything. Not long after, a gaggle of elected officials and bureaucrats went to the Big House on other matters.

KERA was brought about through a lawsuit by 66 school superintendents claiming the state was unfair in allocation of funds to districts. There was some unfairness, although x-number-of-dollars-per-student across-the-board seemed fair enough. The difference in funding accrued to the fact that in many school-districts citizens taxed themselves for additional funds in order to have better schools, something not done to the same extent if at all by many other districts, especially in East-Kentucky, admittedly a sometime depressed area, mostly depending on coal production, although malfeasance by elected property-valuation-administrators was a huge factor.

To the extent of actual need, KERA helped financially, but in the mix the legislature and governor decided to legislate costly pedagogy—an error of inestimable damage (throwing out the baby with the bath-water), opting for something called “outcomes-based-education,” having individual self-esteem as a primary goal and downgrading academic achievement. For instance, KERA provided for the combining of K through third grade and for each school's site-based council (principal, three teachers, two parents) to determine everything from curriculum to the hiring of the principal.

Teachers and administrators quietly disobeyed much of KERA and subsequent legislatures have virtually disemboweled key elements of the law as tests proved that academic achievement headed south, and fast. About the only academic authority a school-board had under KERA was the hiring/firing of the superintendent.

Concerning funds, the school establishment needs to get its house in order before more whining about being financially disenfranchised. KERA perpetrated a financial disaster that could have been avoided if only by not enacting its plethora of duplicate services and attempts to reward expected efforts with bribes. All other government departments have had to bite the bullet, but a bloated education establishment seems to consider itself immune from a stringent cost-to-performance ratio.

In the Fayette County system there are something like 335 headquarters-entities designated as office/department, complete with often highly overpaid supervisors or directors and whatever staffs are needed, a huge bureaucracy. In the schools are assistant principals, when one or at least fewer might be enough. How many counselors are needed? When the nation's education system after WWII propelled the U.S. to be the world leader in every area from manufacturing to the military there were no frills, just intensive academic endeavor and discipline. Now, the U.S. hugely trails other developed nations, especially in the sciences and math.

A look at the staff of Lexington's Lafayette High School (best band in the land), for instance, easily indicates over 30 administrators/counselors (no custodial staff or food-workers included). According to the U.S. News & World Report for 2013, there are nearly 2000 students and 115 teachers, or one administratively connected person for every 3.5 teachers and 65 or so students. I did a five-year stint in teaching (mostly math) some 60 years ago and make no claim that nothing's changed since then, but I can't believe that the entire local and state systems would suffer if undergoing a 10% cut in all but special-ed areas, saving millions.

Other state workers have had to observe non-paid furloughs but there's no suggestion that this obtain with the schools. Instead, an honest effort to wring out the fat is sorely needed before more whining. The op-ed writer said money would always be a prime feature in educational endeavor. Agreed, with the insistence that stringent housekeeping is in order financially.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Gates & the Gang

Depending on one's agenda, it's open season on the book entitled Duty by Robert Gates, former CIA chief under Bush 41 and former Defense Secretary under Bush 43 and Obama. I'm aware of only the snippets of it that have appeared in the media—TV, publications and talk-radio, as well as viewing Gates' appearances on TV to discuss parts of the book. All of these elements have been taken out of context and I plan to read the book, just as I read the books by Bush 43, Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Obama's first book.

Gates has been generally dubbed as forthright and honest by the gurus and there's no reason to think otherwise. He's also served in the military (Air Force), as did Rumsfeld, Bush 41 and Bush 43, the latter three as fighter pilots. This adds a dimension to Gates' account that's invaluable since he understands the ramifications accruing to war, especially including loss of life and treasure as well as the wounds suffered by GIs. By his own account, the latter two caused him much sadness and apprehension.

Perhaps the greatest disdain in the book is dealt Congress, for which he seems to have little respect, not that this represents much disconnect between him and most citizens, at least according to the polls. He used these words for the “majority of Congress”— “uncivil, incompetent in fulfilling basic constitutional responsibilities (such as timely appropriations), micromanagerial, parochial, hypocritical, egotistical, thin-skinned, often putting self (and reelection) before country.” Considering that the Senate, for instance, didn't pass a budget for at least three years, he's on point.

Watching a congressional hearing on C-Span is all that's necessary to see the uncivil aspect. Then-senator Hillary Clinton called General Petraeus a liar to his face (suspended belief) in a hearing and Senator Boxer upbraided an army general for not addressing her properly (he used ma'am) in another kangaroo committee-hanging. Neither lady would know a salute from an obscene gesture. Then-senator Biden addressed former Attorney General Gonzales in a hearing as “old buddy” and accused him of not “being very candid so far.”

Gates might have had senators McCain, Graham and Lieberman in mind when he used the term egotistical. Those three loudly and publicly urged Obama to attack Libya—no threat to any country—when Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mullen wisely, firmly warned against it in another hearing. McCain even went to the Benghazi region and picked out the butchers to whom to give weapons. He was dead wrong and the chaos that led to the “Benghazi Massacre” (then-state secretary Clinton's colossal blunder) was a result.

An incompetent Obama listened to these “three musketeers” and ignored military advice, fomenting a bloody fiasco that lasted seven months, not “just days, not weeks,” as Obama promised. Later, McCain did a photo-op with some Arabs probably in Lebanon and announced that he had discovered the correct Syrian butcher to whom to give weapons. Obama wisely ignored him but had to defer to Russky PM Putin for escaping the hole he had dug for himself by blabbing egotistical “commands” to Assad to vacate his Syrian presidency, then threatened the multiple “red-line” crossings.

The most damning aspect regarding Congress's incompetence is the fact that legislators don't read the bills they pass. The House passed cap-and-trade (democrats, 2010) without reading it and on a day when 300 pages were added to it the night before. Congress, without a republican vote, passed an unread Obamacare bill without reading it in 2010, and then-speaker Pelosi provided the wisdom that no one would know its contents until it was passed. She was right—stupidity to the nth degree.

Ego-driven gimmickry drives elections and reelections. John McCain put virtually unheard of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin on the ticket in 2008 in an effort to get the all-important women's vote, just as the democrats did in 1984 in picking Geraldine Ferraro. It didn't work either time, but the solons figure the Great Unwashed are too dumb to see through their shenanigans. Disgusting!

Gates had some good as well as critical things to say about Obama but he maybe meant a bit of payback, too. Paying attention to three women (Clinton, Rice, Power) who wouldn't know an RPG from a candlestick, he cut Gates out of the loop, set decent Americans upon innocent Libyans and announced this action when starting a vacation in Brazil while Gates was on official business in Russia. That's bottom-of-the-barrel stuff.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Economic Stagnation...Long-Term?

The president boasts that the recovery is going great when his own Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates otherwise. The brag will now be that the unemployment rate is all the way down to 6.7% and falling. That rate used to be determined by the number of people looking for jobs. Today, it's figured on the number of people who have quit looking for work, a political expediency for an administration presiding over an economic debacle.

The BLS also figures the ACTUAL unemployment rate based on the unemployed, under-employed and the discouraged, those who have quit the job-search, having discovered the dearth of jobs. That rate—the actual picture—is called the U-6 rate by the BLS and stands at 13.1%, nearly double the propaganda-rate the administration uses, and will keep rising. During the throes of the Great Depression in 1937, the actual unemployment rate (people desperately seeking work) stood minimally higher at 14.3%, though the average during 1932-40 was 19.1%. The nation seems headed in that direction.

In the week ending January 4, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted unemployment initial claims was 330,000, according to the BLS. Only 74,000 jobs (70,000 of which in retail & wholesale trade) were created in December 2013 (1,480 per state). The conclusion to be drawn is obvious.

Exacerbating the problem are the 1.3 million unemployed who lost their benefits on 28 December – $1,166 per month. If Congress does not act, another 3.6 million could lose benefits by the end of 2014. At the height of the recession, not over despite Obama's claims, benefits could be claimed for 99 weeks, or nearly two years. The limit currently is 73 weeks.

According to BLS statistics, the employment-to-population ratio now of workers age 16 and older is the same as that of 1975 – 57.7. The ratio in 2001 was about 64. The population has increased by 44% while the job situation is the same as that of 38 years ago. The trend is obvious and the current mark has held steady since 2009, when Obama took office.

According to the Department of Numbers (contextualizes public data), there were 136,877,000 jobs in December 2013. In January 2008, there were 138,056,000 jobs, indicating a six-year loss of some 1.2 million jobs. At December's job-growth rate, it would take 16 years to get back that deficit, though one presumes that the future, while rather grim, is not quite that bleak.

In a televised floor-session on C-Span-2 on 09 January, Senate Majority Leader Reid told Senate Minority Leader McConnell that not one of the 20 amendments offered by republicans to a bill returning benefits to those who have just lost them would be taken up. Republicans are not against the benefits but insist that monies to fund them have to be found, thus their attempts at fiscal responsibility.

Reid seems to think the money can just be either printed or borrowed from China, giving democrats a wedge issue for an election year. He certainly has no solution to a problem that is nearing the tipping point. The citizens are caught in the cross-hairs of a petty quarrel fostered by a petty Majority Leader, whose only interest is in making republicans look mean, and posturing for November...beneath contempt

The greater tragedy is that the nation is becoming, ironically, a sort of plantation with the government as Simon Legree and the citizens divided into workers and non-workers. Gradually, everything—especially medical care at the moment—is being undertaken by Legree, who will make all decisions, with the understanding that the producers will cough up the wherewithal necessary for the survival of all.

This is called socialism, remarking the end of a great democratic, capitalistic experiment called the United States. Everything from the failed $787 billion stimulus and $700 billion TARP to the government takeover and bankrupting of General Motors and Chrysler has proven that using money, whether real or imagined, to solve every problem doesn't work, and that there's no such thing as a level playing field. The fat cats will rise to the top. Currently, half of all Congress-people, as well as the president, are millionaires who have interests to be protected.

Things will not improve soon. The pollsters indicate the near-total disrespect of Congress and the overwhelming disapproval of Obama's performance by the citizens. Until strong, wise, unselfish leaders appear, there's little hope.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Democratic Oligarchy—Oxymoron?

Politicians usually reference the U.S. as being a democracy since lawmakers and other governing officials are chosen by the “people.” However, in many if not most respects the U.S. is an oligarchy, defined as “a country, business, etc., that is controlled by a small group of people: the people that control a country, business, etc.: government or control by a small group of people.”

The vast majority of lawmakers in the Congress and state legislatures simply follow the line, which is determined by a small group. In Congress, for instance, the party in power rules, with the majority leader and committee chairman—a handful of folks—actually calling the shots. The minority leader and committee ranking-members can fight but they can't win. The rest of the members often might as well be in Philadelphia except for the time votes are cast, usually along party lines promulgated by the “leaders.”

Working hand-in-glove with the legislators are the representatives of the special-interest groups – the lobbyists, who actually write the bills, becoming a part of the governing oligarchy. The lawmakers and probably the president had little knowledge of Obamacare, for instance. The lawmakers, with the possible exception of a handful, didn't even read the huge bill enacting it. If they had, even democrats would have recognized it for its unworkable and unfair mandates, absent huge increases in revenue enhancements—taxes.

Oligarchs consider themselves above the law and superior to the average guy. The president changes his own law simply by pronouncement, whether his changes make sense or not. The Congress-people are either too collectively stupid to do anything about this or simply don't want to stir up political trouble...for anyone.

The insurance companies, as a result, have no clue as to enrollment, costs, claims, time-frames and the like. Policy-holders are forced to pay for services they will never need such as men paying for extremely high gynecological problems and abortions and women paying for costly treatment accruing to the brain-concussions of NFL football players. An even smaller group of bureaucrats and “regulators” determine who gets what treatment...more oligarchs.

The penultimate example of oligarchy occurred when the legally appointed person to fill Obama's Senate seat in 2009 to fill out his term was locked out of his office in the capitol. The president and Senator Durbin had already decided on that appointment and simply told the Constitutionally-appointed man to get lost. The court overruled Obama and Durbin so the citizen is left to wonder if Obama and Durbin were too dumb to know the law or simply had no intention of obeying it. The latter—at least one hopes—was the case. Having people that stupid in high office is scary.

It gets scarier. In a Congressional hearing on 01 March 2011, Defense Secretary Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mullen warned against any action in Libya. Obama had decided to attack the weak nation militarily but knew he could not get Congress to go along because Libya was not a threat to this or any other country, i.e., that he had no Constitutional authority to make unprovoked war on a sovereign nation.

Consequently, he sent three ladies—State Secretary Clinton, UN Ambassador Rice and White House hack Samantha Power—to the UN Security Council for permission. With Russia, Brazil, Germany, India and China abstaining (any one could have vetoed), permission was obtained. Obama ordered the action on 19 March, announcing the air-strikes in Brazil rather than Washington.

An oligarchy of one man and three women un-Constitutionally started a war the president said would last for days, not weeks, but bombed Libya into submission for seven months, with never an accounting of the number of Libyan civilians who died or were injured. On 19 March 2011, Secretary Gates was completely out of the loop in Russia and announced Obama's action as “on-the-fly,” i.e., without proper planning.

At midnight on Christmas Eve 2010, a small oligarchy of the president and Congressional democrats ignorant of the legislation (not one republican voted for it) managed passage of Obamacare. Later, an oligarchy of five SCOTUS justices ruled it Constitutional. All the ramifications of this law are not yet known but the president (oligarchy of one) has already illegally changed it numerous times and even exempted at least a thousand entities from its mandates.

Whether capitalistic, socialistic, communistic, or democratic, oligarchs rise to the top of governing systems. The president and other bureaucrats whine of inequalities...but they perpetrate them. It's called “class warfare.”

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Arm al-Maliki?

State Secretary John Kerry is promising help to Prime Minister al-Maliki in Iraq, though not by way of troops on the ground. Kerry is famous (or infamous) for voting for the Iraq action back in 2002 but then voting not to fund it—actually a NO vote, but perhaps with his derriere covered either way. Penultimate politician!

This is what Kerry said to a Senate committee in 1971: “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 [in Vietnam] by the United States of America … .” Kerry’s comrades/nation had murdered [his word] 1.6 million Vietnamese 1964-71, mostly civilians – women, children, and old men...if he was right. He’s never offered a scintilla of proof for that wacky accusation.

The Iraqi soldiers don't need AK-47s. They have plenty of those. They don't need people since the army is supposed to be comprised of 271,400 troops, down from Saddam's 400,000 back in the day but still huge for a nation of only 31.1 million. They need big-time artillery, tanks, RPGs, missile launchers – the works for fighting an all-out war, weapons Obama wisely withheld from Syrian rebels, who now are slaughtering each other to see who will run things when Assad is dispatched, not that he will be.

The Iraqis are having the sectarian civil war that well-informed folks knew they would have after Saddam Hussein, his sons and their cutthroats were neutralized. Obama could have removed the Americans much sooner than 2011 and their war would have begun then. Instead, he left them there to continue to be killed while the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds awaited the announced day of departure. Now, the time is at hand.

Saddam was a butchering Sunni Muslim and ruled with a minority of about 34% of the population. Al-Maliki is a Shiite Muslim, ruling (or attempting to) with his cult, some 63% of the population in payback mode. The Kurds in the North (about 17%) are their own sort of Arab, most of them Sunnis. Al Qaeda now controls much of the population, having moved in even before the Americans left in 2011 and now holds famed Fallujah, scene of some of the bitterest fighting in the Iraqi action.

People like Senators McCain and Graham crow an “I told you so” theme (chaos in a total American pullout) but spit in the wind. Tying up American GIs (10,000 or so) for decades would change nothing because Muslims kill each other with the same vengeance they kill infidels—maybe a greater one. Sectarian violence is unsurpassed in intensity...remember the Crusades. Saladin was a Kurd.

The warmongers bewail the fact that U.S. Forces are exiting Afghanistan this year. Not waiting until December, he should be removing them as rapidly as possible now, along with the other NATO forces. When they're gone, the al Qaeda and Taliban butchers can then get it on with their never-ending fighting. It's time that U.S. officials—both before and after the fact—admit that efforts to democratize both Iraq and Afghanistan have failed, notwithstanding the “free elections” in both countries, which meant nothing.

Senator McCain (forever seeking a camera) was in Kabul last week trying to be State Secretary and cut a deal with Afghan honcho Karzai to keep Americans in Afghanistan after this year. He also found the folks to give weapons in Libya (created total chaos) and later, the folks to give weapons in Syria. It's time for him to shut up and stay home. He's helped spread the murderous al Qaeda (especially exiting Libya) throughout the Middle East and sub-Sahara Africa.

Muslims, as always, are primed to kill each other by boatloads in the name of some cult of Islam and there's nothing anyone can do about that. Though it sounds insensitive, it nevertheless is true that when they devote their energies in that direction they're leaving the infidels (Americans) alone.

Hindsight indicates that the “surges” in both Iraq (Bush 43) and Afghanistan (Obama) that cost many American lives were terrible, costly mistakes. Sunnis, Shiites, Wahabis, Alawites, whatever—all warring branches of Islam—are now in high-gear battle-mode. Until sanity overtakes them, nothing can be done.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Perverse Papal Pronouncements

TIME magazine spent many pages extolling the virtues of Pope Francis in designating him as “person of the year.” He deserved the recognition, along with a host of others, who made huge splashes on the national/global scene. Notwithstanding all the reasons TIME gave for its choice, the actual reasons were the Pope's offhand remark concerning homosexuals, to wit, that it wasn't his job to judge, and his stated remarks against capitalism as a financial societal system.

Whereas Pope Francis used words—absolutely no tangible changes—to earn his spot, someone like Russia's Vladimir Putin, for instance, actually DID something, stepping into the Syrian conflict to primarily keep President Obama from doing something disastrous like intervening militarily (as in Libya) or furnishing weapons that could blow the place away. Assad's WMD (toxic gases) remains in Syria and in any case cannot be safely moved or destroyed absent $billions needed for the ability to do so. Witness the enormous amounts being spent in the U.S. just to build the facilities for this work, such as at Bluegrass Army Depot outside Richmond. Ky.

Though Protestants and evangelicals disagree, Catholics consider the Popes to be the direct descendents of Peter the apostle and designated as such by Christ to maintain the foundation of the church. In this role, Pope Francis doesn't just speak for the church but is the church. However, he is constrained by the issue of infallibility that applies to the Pope—all Popes.

The definition of infallible: “not capable of being wrong or making mistakes: not fallible.” This means that a pope can hardly change anything a preceding pope has done all the way back to whenever. Actually, while there's a genealogy for Christ in the Bible, there's none for the descendents of Peter, eventuating in the Pope. Too, at one time priests were allowed to marry, so apparently Popes have made changes, sort of disrupting the infallibility facet.

As Pope, Francis IS the one, according to Catholic doctrine, to judge the behavior and relationships of homosexuals and announce his judgments to the church. Atheists and agnostics (and TIME) jumped on his statement with glee because it destroyed his credibility and that of the church, something dear to the hearts of the “anything goes” crowd and establishing secularism/hedonism as predominant over spiritualism. If the Pope can't judge on the basis of scripture, tradition and previous Papal promulgations, who can?

The quick answer—embraced by most Protestants and evangelicals—is that only God can judge but Catholics have been taught to trust the Pope for their answers. Heading a church of 1.2 billion members worldwide, Pope Francis is the acknowledged world leader in religious matters. His offhanded statement was terribly unfortunate since he's also supposed to use scripture—which profoundly condemns perverted behavior—as his authority.

Pope Francis's condemnation of capitalism (a “new tyranny,” his words) was also unfortunate since capitalist philosophy has produced the financial resources the church uses to do its work. Ensconced in palatial surroundings (whether he uses them or not) built upon the backs of entrepreneurs and workers employed by them, he seems not to understand that there's no such thing as a free lunch. He has total control of at least $34 million in the Vatican and Holy See besides all the finances in parishes throughout the world since they are directly accountable to him—money given through entrepreneurship, since the church produces nothing of financial significance.

In his important proclamation for World Peace Day, Pope Francis condemned the “increasing inequality between the rich and poor,” a constant drumbeat of President Obama, who has seen that inequality gap mushroom in his 5-year presidential tenure in the U.S. as he's worked hard and successfully to discourage capitalism. Neither man understands economics, though Obama has become a multimillionaire in a capitalistic society and the Pope seems not to understand that church offerings are tax-deductible and therefore shouldn't be subject to discouragement by Papal pronouncements.

The Pope speaks globally. The president speaks provincially but the issue is the same for both. Robbing Peter to pay Paul (no pun intended) has never worked because mankind is imperfect, the result being that whoever has the most resources, whether abstract or tangible, will gain the ascendancy. Encouraging charity is the way to go but discouraging financing it is counterproductive—just plain common sense.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Homophobia or Speech-Freedom?

The “Duck Dynasty” brouhaha has snapped the nation's attention again to an issue presented by the homosexual community and/or its rabid supporters, to wit, that criticism of “gays” is not allowed...meaning that homosexuals are intolerant of tolerance, that gays can say what they think about “straights” (mean, homophobic, haters, etc.) but that the vast majority of folks (about 99%) may not speak about perversion. Apparently, the LGBT gang thinks the U.S. Constitution requires freedom of speech for only them.

This is not a Constitutional/legal matter, of course. If Phil Robertson had screamed a “false-alarm” fire-warning in a building, he might have to be dealt with since that could have caused physical harm to folks. Words do not hurt people unless they're amenable to being hurt—thin-skinned. It's doubtful that Robertson's skin is very thin, as proven by his apparent ability not to be bothered by the names he's been called.

It's amazing how cultural approvals/disapprovals change, especially in exceedingly brief time-frames. In only four years (an election cycle), for instance, Obama “evolved” from categorically affirming marriage to be a “one-man-one-woman” thing to being gung-ho for same-sex marriage, notwithstanding its legal ramifications. Biologically, such marriages are impossible unless, of course, sex plays no part in the discussion, in which case same-sex civil unions are already recognized in many areas, with the same government/institutional perks that accrue to actual husbands and wives.

Sixty years ago (April 1953), President Eisenhower indicated that homosexuals and lesbians were “potential threats” to national security and issued executive order number 10450 mandating that no one in either group was to be hired in federal government. Today, they are welcomed into government by a president with scant governing background and absolutely no military experience.

The case of Air Force enlisted man Bradley Manning is cause to make one wonder if Obama is ill-advised. Manning provided damaging national secrets (far worse than Edward Snowden's exposure of NSA operations) to Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, who made them available to news media worldwide. He has just been sentenced to 35 years but prefers to serve it as Chelsea Manning, demanding that government provide him a sex-change program. Eisenhower was right...perverted biology bespeaks perverted (even criminal) mentality.

In October 1964, President Lyndon Johnson was running for reelection when his top aide, Walter Jenkins, was apprehended by D.C. police performing oral sex on an immigrant man in the toilet of a YMCA facility near the White House, not the first apprehension for Jenkins. Johnson believably insisted he had no idea that Jenkins, the father of six children, was a homosexual; otherwise, so soon after Eisenhower's order Jenkins would not have been around.

Johnson had reason to worry because Jenkins possessed information about campaign funds that could have proved disastrous if in the wrong hands. Johnson aides Abe Fortas, later a Supreme Court justice, and Clark Clifford took care of removing all the damaging documents. Jenkins was gone immediately and Johnson was reelected. Could Jenkins, fathering six children, actually claim he was “born that way,” or did he choose that sordid lifestyle, ignoring the possibility that he could carry some dread disease home? Oral- and anal-sex, not to mention other alleged homosexual practices, involve inordinate filth.

Recently retired New Hampshire Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson's homosexual “partner” is referred to by the Center for American Progress as Robinson's “husband.” Robinson's appointment to the Bishopric in 2003 caused deep splits in the church, although the prevailing position of the church seems to be that homosexuality is good. Indeed, but for the bishops mostly in Africa, the official position of the church internationally would grant approval of homosexuals being ordained, as well as married to each other.

Robinson has two grown daughters and grandchildren, so was he “born that way” or did he decide that normal biological sex just wasn't good enough? Did he find that “loving” a man was more fulfilling and scriptural than faithfulness to his wife? Making that case stretches the imagination a brain-wave too far. Physical perversion bespoke an insensitive, selfish kiss-off to his church, causing much harm.

Obama's imprimatur on homosexual behavior and his consequent approval of practicing homosexuals in the military—not Obamacare—will be his primary legacy because this stance damns both the society and the national defense mechanism. He will be known as the “sexual deviancy” president, a Clintonesque stain on the office.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

DNC Memorandum #16

From the office of the chairWOMAN 27 December 2013

***­Listen up! There have been rumblings throughout the party that former FLOTUS/State Secretary/Senator/cuckolded wife (little joke there) Hillary Clinton might be a weak candidate for the top job in 2016 but rest assured she will be unbeatable. Fox News ogre, Charles Krauthammer, said on some crazy program that she would almost certainly be the candidate but that she would be weak, which means she will be STRONG. BTW, the rumor that she intends to recant concerning her statement in the Rose Garden in 2012 anent the misnamed “Benghazi Massacre” is untrue and she has stated that she will not mention it again.

***Though making no apologies for it, health insurance for all staffers has been canceled account it did not meet the new ACA standards. [Note: The term Obamacare is no longer in use. Never use it in any meetings except those involving people who can be expected to come up with big dollars. When in union meetings, avoid the subject altogether.] There have been grumblings around the bottled-water dispenser and sugar-less candy machine that the daily changes made by POTUS concerning ACA make some constitutional idiots argue in town-hall meetings that his actions are not only un-presidential but clearly illegal. Do not—repeat—DO NOT argue about this since...well, get the picture. Be forewarned that you WILL pay the fine if you do not enroll in an insurance plan. Your current salary may help with premiums but account the monstrous deductibles do not—repeat—DO NOT get sick or break a limb. Let skiing wait until later.

***POTUS will be in full campaign mode after his trip to Hawaii...okay...in fuller campaign mode than usual, if possible (little joke there—don't tell). He's requesting that the DNC find the best possible teleprompter-writers for the effort. He's planning on at least an average of 25 speeches per week and the new White House guru, John Podesta, will furnish the information as to when, where and to which groups so that the speech will be tailored for the crowd to be addressed—actually the television audience, as well, so this job means walking a fine line between telling the truth and what the truth ought to be in a specific area. Be thinking of usable quotes from Abe Lincoln and Ronald Reagan. Do not quote anything John Kerry has ever said about anything, even the medals he threw over the fence in 1970, denied it and then said in 2004 he would never do that again. All staffers with at least a “C” in English 101 are eligible and those staffers chosen will take a six-weeks course in the Executive Office Building explaining how to use the truth in various ways as well as when not to use it at all. Podesta is ideal for this job, having recently called the GOP "a cult worthy of Jonestown." So...snakey, sneaky, sniveling and snarky are in now. The rumor that he will continue to be paid by George Soros to plan GOP rally-disruptions is untrue and Podesta has promised not to mention it again.

***There have been questions as to why POTUS has enrolled in the healthcare plan for a policy he never plans to use since he already has better insurance that hasn't been canceled...at least not yet. His reasoning is that he will become the prime role model or hero or mentor or whatever else people are for doing good things, thus encouraging especially the young to get enrolled lest ACA implode for lack of funds. Unfortunately, a gaggle of Harvard- and Yale-professors took this to mean that everyone is required to have two healthcare policies and their applications have befuddled the computers in the appropriate settings to the point of crashing. Professors at MIT and other tech schools and colleges have gone on Facebook to express either laughter or consternation or outright derision at what they consider an act so unbelievably silly as to actually not have happened. When addressing this matter, do not mention that POTUS's premium cost is less than 1.2% percent of his annual salary. People in all classes would love such a deal, especially in light of what they're facing in their plans. The poor guy making an average of about $50,000 per year would pay only $600, or $50 a month for such a policy. Stay far away from this subject, especially where people understand how to understand percentages...roughly above fifth-grade level.

***A main theme in the POTUS campaign in 2014 for Congressional office-seekers will be same-sex marriage. The idea is to push this as a superior form of family, introducing new ways of showing affection, a sort of departure from the traditional sex-ways in the interest of making cohabitation of any kind—even heterosexual marriage or shack-ups—exciting and educational, considering the times now, when anything goes. Warning: Be very careful in this area and do not—repeat—Do Not—let any reference to triangular- or quadruple-marriages or (perish the thought) bestiality enter any discussion, especially in town-halls held in bars. Also, plead ignorance of anything connected to “Duck Dynasty,” especially in states between California and New England, where most of the highly unsophisticated population lives.

***The 2014 elections are terribly important. If the House can be re-captured, your overseer is willing to take on CongressWOMAN Pelosi for the job of Speaker. In that position, she can commit patronage on a scale to give great rewards to staffers who work hard. If, however, the repubs survive, all bets are off and she will be revenge-minded...so staffers, be warned. In the meantime—HAPPY NEW YEAR!

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Presidential Arrogance/Ignorance

It’s perfectly obvious now as it was to many then that the antics of President Obama over the last few years with regard to foreign affairs, especially in the Middle East, have been not just ineffective but worthless and witless. In announcing in a well designed flourish of arrogance that leaders of various nations should quit and turn their countries over to whatever outfits could grab and manage them, he placed himself in their predicaments since the same thing could happen to him if the Tea partiers, for instance, ginned up a lot of support and rose against him.

Imagine massacres like those in Damascus in outlying McLean, Virginia, and mortar shells landing on Pennsylvania Avenue, especially if the prime ministers of England, Germany and France called for him to get out of Dodge and let the cowhands with the six-shooters have it. They might even decide to whom to give those pistols, like Obama crazily did concerning Libya.

Think Egypt’s Mubarak, Yemen’s Saleh, Libya’s Qaddafi and Syria’s Assad. Each of these nations is in much worse shape now than before the president applied the “Obama Doctrine.” In the case of Libya, Obama saw to Qadaffi’s murder personally, and that benighted nation is now a society in hopeless shambles wallowing in bloodshed, with cutthroats from its well established al Qaeda vipers’ nest spreading Islamic jihad throughout sub-Saharan Africa, murdering especially Christians at will.

None of these nations posed a threat to the U.S., but their insurgents – fully expecting to be armed by the U.S. on the basis of Obama’s disastrous pronouncements – had no idea that Obama was all wind and no fury. Even more disappointing was Senator McCain’s visits to places like Libya and Lebanon to “discover” the grand revolutionists to whom weapons could be safely awarded. Obama made the tragic error of giving millions of dollars worth of weapons to the Morsi government in Egypt, a snake-pit inhabited by the murderous Muslim Brotherhood and justifiably overthrown by the “people,” who recognized Obama as the friend of their enemy and therefore their enemy.

Obama’s disdain of the U.S. Constitution has been well demonstrated, as in the case of his unprovoked personal war against Libya, a sovereign nation, without even a consultation with Congress. Now, he acts illegally in changing Obamacare on practically a daily basis, nullifying provisions set in law. His apparent lack of historical perception, however, is simply astonishing.

He seems not to understand, for instance, that Syria’s Assad is doing what Lincoln did in 1861—attempting to preserve a nation and its government. The result was an unbelievable amount of American bloodshed…some 625,000 Union and Confederate military dead, not to mention tens of thousands of soldiers maimed for life and civilians turned into refugees in their own country.

Obama was actually considering entering the Syrian conflict and might even have made that horrendous mistake but for Russia’s Putin backing Assad in the interest of preserving the government (and Russian interests) but destroying (at least allegedly) Syria’s WMD. Much of that weaponry is surely well-hidden, and Putin probably knows where. Result: Syria still has a government, albeit with bloodshed, but is not under the sword of Islam jihad-freaks and vicious tribal chiefs, as is the case in Libya.

The Middle East has far less stability now than when the “Obama Doctrine” was brought forth. How much better would it have been if Obama had either kept his overworked and under-educated teleprompters shut down…or, perish the thought, actually helped Qaddafi fight al Qaeda, which is what the Libyan president claimed he was doing? How much carnage would have been spared if he had not tried to unseat Assad, giving weapons and carte blanche to grossly unpredictable tribal chiefs to be as murderous as the Syrian army?

Historians will make judgments down the line but it’s perfectly obvious in real time that this president has destroyed this nation’s credibility regarding the perception held by people in other nations. Once the envy of the world in education, innovation, manufacturing, wealth, democratic philosophy, religious orientation, defense and stability, the U.S. teeters on the brink of bankruptcy in domestic/world affairs, lacking the necessary morality and consequent integrity necessary to “doing the right thing.”

It’s sad to watch any nation futilely fight decline. It’s much sadder to watch one’s own not even fight, with leadership so vapid as to be essentially nonexistent.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

P.S. MERRY CHRISTMAS
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

Perversionism Joins Feminism

The nation has been plowing its way through the “Age of Feminism” for a few decades now, with the ladies gradually taking over (or at least attempting to so do) just about everything from construction jobs to the legal profession (especially the courts) to the medical system to the military. Men, fearing the charge of chauvinism or insensitive brutishness or gender-racism, have watched slack-jawed, instinctively refusing to fight what they see in some ways as ruinous.

Nearly every activity in national life has had its “first woman” featured prominently in the media, just as the case with the “first black man” or the “first black woman,” as if these people previously had been dumb non-entities. Though demeaning, the ladies and the others apparently see it as making them special, deserving every accolade and anything else connected to their “firsts,” often collected through lawsuits against…yep…evil men, 99% white.

The beat goes on with the women, but there’s now a new “age”—the “age of perversionism [admittedly sic…and sick].” For instance, the first “gay guy” to be mayor of Lexington, Ky., was big news four years ago, when he spent a million of his own dollars to buy the post and is preparing to spend at least that much again. It’s the “age of the homosexual,” a special breed of humanoid and discoverer of unbelievably exotic ways to use body orifices an eighth-grader understands to be…strange.

Just as the ladies and blacks have become protected species, homosexuals have achieved that exalted status, at least as evaluated by the “mainstream media,” the Hollywood elites and their favorite manipulative bureaucrat—Barack Hussein Obama, who has indelibly stamped his imprimatur on the superiority of these beings in their proving that anal- and oral-sex are extraordinary, notwithstanding the filthiness involved.

Anachronistic and s-o-o-o provincial? Yeah, the homage paid to perverts makes the previous recognition of their “quaintness” as being foul and in violation of both decency and biology so unsophisticated. The powers-that-be had to close the toilets in a public park in my town once because these neo-sophisticates had appropriated them to do their thing, thus providing a public service in educating the children who might wander in.

The prez, who said five years ago that marriage was possible between only a man and woman, has, according to his term, “evolved,” into understanding that marriage is for two guys who “love” each other. Yeah…love is the big deal in these hookups among a class of individuals known primarily as unashamedly promiscuous. Men loving each other intimately or romantically sounds as silly as prostitutes loving their johns.

A guy who “loves” a same-sex friend would never place his grimy “exhaust apparatus” where the sun never shines or where teeth, tongue and tonsils could be “messed with.” That goes for heterosexuals, too, body orifices being designed specifically for certain activities only. Former president Clinton remarked that point, his contribution to society forever tainted by the infamous “stain on the dress.” Unsurprisingly, he’s expressed regret that he signed the Defense of Marriage Act…s-o-o-o un-cool.

Proving his commitment to perversionism [sic], POTUS announced that neither he nor wifey dear nor VPOTUS and his wife will attend the Olympics in Russia because Putin—that insensitive ogre—has made it plain that homosexuals are not welcome anywhere. Soundly defeated by Putin currently in the conduct of world affairs, Obama is sending two lesbians to officially represent the USA. So there, Vladimir! This should make all U.S athletes proud…coming from a nation whose president wallows in the amoral depths and acts like a spoiled child.

Like the doctor who remarked to his radio host in my town that he was aghast in a local restaurant in discovering that he had just treated his waiter for anal gonorrhea, one cringes at the ramifications of this virtual worship of the homosexual, protecting him/her/it (those trans-genders and Qs) even more stringently than the polar bears. They’re even welcome – after hundreds of years – in the military, where commanders dread to see them officially “outed.”

Once considered a genetically caused malady among a miniscule number, homosexuality is now even more normal than normal—part of Obama’s legacy that also reinforces his status as an international joke. Move over, ladies, the new protected “ism” has arrived—perversionism.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

A Redtape Letter

The Screwtape Letters by the noted British author C.S. Lewis is one of my favorite books. The long letters were written by a man, Screwtape, for the purpose of instructing his nephew, Wormwood, in how to evangelize an ordinary man against God and into following Satan. I’ve been working on a book probably titled The Redtape Letters, including letters from a man, Redtape, instructing his nephew, Gullible, vis-à-vis politics/society and how to guide the nation into socialism. Here is a letter dealing with the so-called Affordable Care Act:

My dear Nephew,

I think I’ve already mentioned the Affordable Care Act and perhaps some things concerning its contents but you may have questions about why it has become a colossal fiasco, seemingly overseen by nincompoops. I’m still wondering why the party that pays very vocal heed to the enemy has been strangely almost quiescent in that it has raised little by way of either ridicule or objections, though, of course, it may have thoughts of simply letting the president twist in the wind over what everyone says is his prime legacy. The short answer is that it either is as incompetent as the president is encouraging the citizenry to believe about himself or it secretly likes the plan itself. “Something for nothing” is as attractive to republicans as it is to any other entity. By the time the ACA becomes the elephant in the living-room, most current lawmakers will be drawing the lush pensions they have devised for themselves, so who cares…eh?

The mayhem occurring with the healthcare web-site, the catastrophic roll-out and the entire mess, with doctors having no idea who and where their patients will be, not to mention the millions whose policies have been canceled—never mind that the prez said this would never happen—does not constitute an accident, poor planning or anything not intended. This disarray has been well-planned from the start. The public—sometimes referred to by my people as a collection of dolts—has been fooled into believing that the ACA would guarantee not healthcare exactly but the insurance to pay for whatever healthcare is available when the dust settles. There’s a tremendous difference. Suffice it to say that the objective all along has been to convert the entire public into single-payers. The notion that insurance has ever been important is just that – a notion.

The rubber will hit the road when citizens discover the cost and the unbelievable deductibles connected to the insurance. The doctors will rebel when they discover that the ACA regulators (a whole army of them as well as another army at IRS to ride herd on the citizens who don’t comply) will set their fees and regulate the regimens they construct for treatment (or non-treatment…little joke there). In other words, the system is designed to fail…simply implode as taxes are relentlessly raised to make the ACA affordable, which it never will be. When the implosion takes place, single-payer will be all that’s left. Actually, multitudes of doctors and other health-providers will already have left healthcare by that time. This will exacerbate the failure even more and, obviously, at about this point the nation will be accepting the Force, mostly with gnashing of the teeth, except for people like me and, hopefully, you, the enlightened…and the president, of course, though he will have left office but will be in line to once again take over as the Constitution is rewritten. The members of his party, who never read the ACA legislation and wouldn’t have understood it anyway, actually are quite dumb and have not thought through the chain of events now firmly begun. Those who pay attention to the enemy know what’s happening but are in the minority and, in any event, are weak, weak, weak.

The next shoe to drop has been put off by the prez, who actually pays little attention to the law and has little understanding of it, except that it promises civil unrest, which is necessary to establishing the Force. Though he had no legal right to do it, the prez has put off the “employer mandate” section of the law from January 2014 to January 2015 or later. When this mandate is obeyed, tens of millions of policies will be lost and people might take to the streets. Ordinarily that would not be so bad for moving toward the Force but it would be too early for that now. The ignorant populace still believes in democracy and the military is and will be for some time under civilian control. The president, when he ran the first time, called for a domestic police force equal to the military in resources. If the voters continue his ilk in office…well, you can see.

I hope you’re getting the picture. ACA is vitally important because bringing people’s very health and well-being under control eventuates in bringing them entirely under control. The single-payer concept—inevitable now—means that sick people will not just go to the doctor. Instead, they will go to the government, which will then send them to the doctor it chooses for them unless a regulator decides that the would-be patient is not sick enough to take up a doctor’s time. In discussing this with your friends and (hopefully) fellow organizers, however, do not mention the so-called “death panels,” a particularly sore subject because of some very bad publicity. Old codgers will still get artificial knee-replacements for a long time yet, and a hemlock cocktail is not on the horizon…yet.

I hope you’ve lodged a logical, well-written complaint against that meteorology professor who claimed that Al Gore and the IPCC are well-heeled opportunists who wouldn’t know a rainstorm from a drought. People like him are dangerous because they make people think, an absolute no-no to devotees of the Force. People like me and (hopefully) you DO think but not about what to do FOR people; rather, what to do TO people. That’s the menu to click for POWER.

Your affectionate uncle,
Redtape

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

The Professor & Unions

In an op-ed of 10 December In the Lexington [Ky.] Herald-Leader, University of Kentucky professor Ron Formisano, currently on leave, stated that “inequality in the nation has reached record heights not seen since the 1920s,” and that “a prime cause has been the decline of labor unions.” He claimed the result to be “its middle class getting smaller.” The inequality he noted had mostly to do with wages, though wages are often affected by inequality in such things as IQ, risk-taking, education, personal incentive and, often, plain luck.

Formisano did not define the middle class. According to PBS in a September 2012 report, both Romney and Obama (both millionaires) agreed that it consisted of folks making below $250,000. Most others, Formisano included, probably would not agree. The government has never defined the middle class, so it actually is what anyone says it is.

According to the federal HHS Department, the poverty level for a family of four stands at $23,550. According to an American Community Survey report in September, the median household income in 2012 was $51,371. The census is split into five classes, each involving 20% of the population. The middle 20% of households ranged in the $38,500 – $62,400 category. This group is probably not the middle class, with 40% of 310 million in population both above and below it financially.

This is from TIME magazine in February 2009 (Claire Sudath): “Today, most middle-class Americans are homeowners. They have mortgages, at least some college education and a professional or managerial job that earns them somewhere between $30,000 and $100,000 a year … and 70% of them have cable and two or more cars. Two-thirds have high-speed Internet, and 40% own a flat-screen TV.” Blue-collar, unionized workers also fit her description.

There’s been some change account the continuing recession (despite the government’s insistence that it’s over) but the above seems accurate for working-class families now. The major decline during the last three years is the huge loss of jobs and an unemployment rate that’s actually close to 20%. This loss – and consequent middle-class shrinkage? – has nothing to do with labor unions, notwithstanding the hundreds of billions of “stimulus” dollars wasted on non-existent “shovel-ready” jobs presumably designed for union members, Obama’s locked-in support group.

Thirty-five percent of the work-force was unionized in the 1950s, mostly in private companies. Today, that figure is at 6.6%, with unionized government workers at 4.7%—total, 11.3%. It would be much lower if Obama had not bankrupted General Motors and Chrysler in 2009, slamming shareholders but protecting union jobs. The government has just made the final sale of taxpayer shares, with $11.8 billion in losses to the taxpayers.

The union-decline began when huge numbers of women entered the work-force during and following WWII, but between 1967 and 2011 the number of female workers increased rapidly by 343% while the male work force merely doubled (103%), according to the Census Bureau and Dept. of Labor statistics. Two-earner households meant men alone no longer had to bring home the bacon, consequently did not pursue perks and raises that unions stood for. In addition, women now outnumber men in higher education and are entering professions, not manual labor.

Formisano cited the most unionized and least unionized states concerning middle-class households (whatever they are) as realizing 47.4% and 46.8%, respectively, of total state income—virtually no difference, actually destroying his own argument. The loss of manufacturing jobs has all but killed the economy, not the weakening of unions.

Blame for losing these jobs is equally shared by unions and management, each inordinately greedy and corrupt to the point of pricing U.S.-made goods out of the market, domestic and global. I belonged to blue-collar transportation unions for decades, mostly as a locomotive engineer, and certainly appreciated union achievements, but I examined the rail (132 lbs to the linear yard) on which I operated trains one summer day some 30 or so years ago and discovered it was made in Japan, where there were/are no iron-ore mines and from where it had to be shipped 6,000 miles at great expense, but still undercutting U.S. steel-makers.

I also lived in Ashland, Ky., in the 1960s and watched industry-giant Armco Steel begin sinking into demise—greed. Technology has played a part, too. In my tenure, I witnessed labor-intensive train crews reduced from five to two men, no matter the length or tonnage of the train.

The prime cause for inequality has little to do with unions.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Paper Popularizes PERVERSION

One of the sickest articles ever to tarnish the front page of the Lexington Herald-Leader appeared on 05 December, accompanied by a picture of two naked homosexual men made up as women and apparently hunched into a sort of vertical anal-sex ecstasy. The same two appeared on an inside page dressed as naked women in an embrace and described as “water nymphs.”

The article was about a film entitled The Last Gospel of the Pagan Babies, based on one of the homosexual’s “story of growing up in a flamboyant and openly gay community [1982-2007] in a southern city where few thought that sort of thing could happen.” Indeed, the claim was made that this exotic community has “roots” going all the way back to the Civil War, as if that’s any different from similar communities in cities everywhere.

The point of the film was that perversion has finally been recognized as a sort of “special” blessing. The film’s producer said she had an “epiphany” about an extraordinary time with these extraordinary (special) people while on a visit to Lexington, Ky., where she had once resided.

The producer spoke of “a time when homosexuality was taboo and fairness ordinances and same-sex marriages were unimaginable,” and claimed this as part of the reason for her documentary. Homosexuality is still taboo and same-sex marriages are still unimaginable, with no laws that make homosexuals a protected species changing anything except allowing a raid on the treasuries of all governments, as well as forcing the vast majority of “straights” to relinquish their rights concerning hiring or servicing people against their will.

In 2012, a small cloth-printing company, Hands On Originals, refused account religious convictions to print a homosexual message on T-shirts advertising a “gay pride parade” sponsored by a local LGBTQ outfit. The Herald-Leader led an attempt to encourage boycotts of HOO that would bankrupt it, even advertising/encouraging a “protest” against the business. The LGBTQ organization predictably brought charges before the Lexington Human Rights Commission, which predictably convicted HOO of discrimination.

In March of 2013, the Kentucky Legislature was fed up with this stuff and to its credit passed HB 279 that protected sincerely held religious beliefs from infringement unless there is a compelling governmental interest. Predictably, Obama-sycophant Governor Beshear vetoed the act, whereupon his veto was overridden 79-15 and 32-6 by the House and Senate, respectively, better than 6 to 1. This vindicated HOO and made the LGBTQ action moot.

Whereas the homosexual “climate” in Lexington (featuring artistic and super-sophisticated icons of intellect, as the film would have it) is replicated everywhere, perhaps few places have had as much newspaper exposure/backing as in Lexington. A decade ago, unrelenting reams of front-page and inside columns and pictures were devoted to the (gasp) uniqueness of two homosexuals in hiring a woman to use their sperm (at least allegedly) on two occasions—just $9,000 a pop—to bear their own alleged offspring.

Quads resulted from the first “pop” (with one fetus medically killed in the womb), but only one child from the second. The consequent history, including a protective order of one of the men against the other, has been lurid. The surrogate “mother,” probably realizing she could be stuck with the five children to add to her three others, petitioned the court to give up all parental rights to her own children but was turned down by the judge, who claimed that all children should have both father and mother.

Later, in court documents it was revealed that the men had broken up two months before the birth of the quads but stayed together in the same house. One of the men revealed that the other began “dating” another homosexual and brought him into the home, so then there were three dads. Get the picture? This is the H-L’s definition of family.

In 2006, the Herald-Leader noticed that a student had been expelled from the University of the Cumberlands, Williamsburg, Ky., account his homosexuality, as the paper would have it. This was not true. The student had flaunted it on Facebook and pictured young men kissing each other. Homosexual BEHAVIOR was disallowed and this was made clear in the school’s book of rules.

On seven days of a nine-day period, the paper made the subject front-page-above-the-fold stuff. In addition to the huge front-page segments, pictures, and headlines, the paper dedicated pages and feet (not inches) of columns and pictures to the subject on its interior pages, all in the front (A) “news, editorial, op-ed” section and advertised a grand protest in Williamsburg that drew maybe 35 people from all over the state—a complete fizzle. This was a profound hatchet job meant to ruin the school, which had 1,700 students then but more than 3,700 now.

The paper’s obsession with perversion as normal (an impossibility) may be due to its slavic bow to political correctness or maybe just because of the policies of its owner, McClatchy. It’s passing strange.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

MONARCHY...or Not?

On 03 December televised on C-Span was one of the most scintillating hearings I’ve ever witnessed, held before the House Judiciary Committee chaired by Congressman Goodlatte. The subject: “The President’s Constitutional Duty to Faithfully Execute the Laws.” The panelists were Jonathan Turley and Nicholas Rosenkranz of Georgetown University (Law), Simon Lazarus of the Constitutional Accountability Center and Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute.

The discussion centered on the “Take care” provision of Article II, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution: “…he [president] shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed… .” Three of the four panelists went to some pain to excoriate President Obama, with, if memory serves, at least two of those indicating they voted for Obama. Lazarus tried to make the case that Obama has acted Constitutionally with respect, especially, to the so-called Affordable Care Act.

Subjects such as immigration were discussed but the main consideration concerned the healthcare act that has undergone tremendous criticism, particularly account the fact that the “rollout” on the Internet was and remains a fiasco. The most damning statement, probably made inadvertently, was made by Lazarus, the president’s defender, when he asserted that the legislators did not know what was in the act when they passed it.

It’s common knowledge that this was true of ACA, passed in 2010, and also the wretched cap-and-trade act passed by the democrat house before 2011 but not taken up by the Senate to this day. No republican voted for either act. Then-Speaker Pelosi is still ridiculed for her claim that people would know what was in the ACA only AFTER it was passed. She was right, making Obama/ democrats into a laughingstock.

Lazarus tried to use the “take care” mandate as the president’s prerogative to apply the laws in the fashion he deemed timely if at all, as in the case of Obama’s public refusal to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act long before it was fated by the Supreme Court in a decision that should terrify citizens if Obama gets to appoint more justices.

Rosenkranz remarked the strange position of Obama in threatening to veto a House resolution to delay the ACA employer mandate for a year, then in a Friday blog (not even a directive) pronounced that delay himself, thus nullifying by executive fiat his Constitutional mandate to execute, not delay, the law passed by the Congress, the ruling body. He was merely “taking care” of his party in the November elections, knowing that the employer mandate will affect the citizenry much worse than the current cancellation of millions of policies he promised for years would not happen.

Note was taken of the fact that Obama already has—although he can’t actually do it Constitutionally—exempted over a thousand entities from having to observe the ACA. It’s a cinch that in his next late-on-a-Friday-evening-blog he will exempt the unions, another illegal act. He knows that but assumes impunity.

The damning but appropriate term used by the panel in the hearing was “monarchy,” the antithesis of what the founders constructed, having just gained freedom from the English monarchy and establishing a representative government of, by and for the people. Picking and choosing for enforcement (immigration laws, for instance) or actually changing laws passed by Congress (ACA) is the most easily recognized modus operandi of Obama, acting as a monarch.

There was much discussion of what the Congress or an individual could do with respect to the courts to rein in a monarchical president. Not much, apparently. Finally, Rosenkranz more than once uttered the word one of the congressmen refused to use—impeach.

The fact that Obama has been the most prolific liar in recent presidential history (Fast-and-Furious, Benghazi Massacre, insurance policy non-cancellations, IRS-scandal, Syria) is not the issue. His blatant attempt to usurp the powers of Congress is, as was proven in his war on Libya, the most flagrant violation of his oath.

Without consulting Congress, Obama un-Constitutionally and in violation of the War Powers Act, sent U.S. forces in March 2011 against a sovereign nation that posed no threat to this country militarily or in any other way and waged that war for seven months, leaving Libya in total disarray.

One congressman asked about war-making. If Obama could attack Libya, causing horrendous bloodshed and anarchy, what might he decide to do about anything? MONARCHY—or not?

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Passenger-Trains Not an Option

Via both op-ed and the “letters” forum, much has been said lately about the need for extensive rail passenger-service throughout the nation, i.e., that Amtrak should make a huge effort to establish ground transportation by rail, thus relieving the traffic on both highways and airways. Actually, this only points up the reason for traveling, whether as a delightful journey just for the sake of it or a trip that’s necessary, with time in transit the prime consideration.

The rail corridor between Boston and Washington has already been put to good use with high-speed trains that deliver passengers directly to specific urban destinations rather than to airports miles away, necessitating further transportation (taxis) or car-rentals. The trains run 150 mph at times but do not travel constantly at near that speed. The average speed between New York and Washington is about 77 mph and between New York and Boston about 64.

Checking a current timetable reveals that an Acela (fast shuttle train) leaves New York’s Penn Station at 6:00 a.m. and arrives in Washington at 8:55, nearly three hours including about 8 stops that eat up time. A train leaving Boston at 5:10 a.m. arrives in New York at 8:45, three hours and 35 minutes and about 6 stops. A flight to Washington from Laguardia takes an hour and 20 minutes and to Boston about an hour and 15 minutes. The trains have no steps, so they stop at only special platforms such as those in subways.

Trains make sense in the Northeast Corridor situation and attract a huge rider-ship; however, they serve none of the many small cities and towns along the way. They do not travel over dedicated tracks but must use those over which freight trains are operated, with the freights handled so that the Acela trains are not delayed, at least hopefully. They also traverse crossings at grade, always a dangerous circumstance because drivers cannot accurately gauge their speed (especially at 150) and sometimes ignore warning-lights and gates.

Interstate rail travel is an altogether different matter, if only on the basis of huge distances. Also, Acela speeds don’t apply between New York and San Jose. A passenger leaving Ashland, Ky., headed for San Jose, California, for instance, will spend some 70 hours on the train, nearly three days, some of which time is spent changing trains and at stops. A Delta flight takes about 6.5 hours with one stop. A coach fare is $466, with first class (sleeper) at $1261. There are few of these trains, as is the case throughout the country, east/west and north/south, with very few stops for passengers.

After WWII, owing to affordable cars and massive highway construction, rail-passenger traffic died rather quickly. The last north-south passenger-train through Lexington made its last run in 1970. In the 1940s, there were at least 12 trains a day through Danville (14 during the winter months), where the trains from Louisville intersected the north-south line.

There were “locals” that stopped in virtually every town on the line. All the “through” trains included a mail-car as well as baggage cars and sleepers. They were relatively fast, considering both the time and the terrain between Cincinnati and Chattanooga. No. 3 made it in 8.5 hours, with a few stops…335 miles.

Covering about 2,500 miles, the train-trip from Ashland to San Jose averages about 36 mph, though I have a locomotive friend who operated trains at about 90 mph over a division from central Illinois west. The railroads are not enamored with passenger trains because they cause delays to freight trains, which furnish virtually all the revenue (profit). At one time (and probably still), the division of the Norfolk Southern between Danville, Ky., and Harriman, Tenn., handled/s the greatest volume of freight trains of any railroad east of the Mississippi River.

Bus transportation companies have suffered the same loss of business as the railroads. A plethora of buses used to come through Lexington (busy downtown terminal) and service the many towns through which they passed. That time has long since passed due to the automobile, even though government money furnishes the roads, unlike with the railroads that have to build and maintain their tracks at great expense.

People think in terms of the fast rail systems in Europe and Japan, with speeds in Japan set at 199 mph for passenger comfort (curves, turbulence, etc.). Maximum speed in Germany is 186 mph. In Norway, regular gasoline costs $11.54 a gallon and in England $9.85. Gas is much higher in Europe and Japan than in the U.S. so there’s great incentive to ride the rails.

Heavy freight trains make rail maintenance costly and constant. As a former locomotive engineer, I handled coal trains requiring six engines at some 200 tons apiece (21,600 horsepower) and 100 cars of coal at 135 tons each—total weight 14,700 tons. Imagine the forces at work when that train went around a sharp curve at just 40 mph. The ride was not smooth, though one might expect it to be like gliding.

This means that tracks for freights do not lend themselves to smoothness even for light passenger trains, especially at high speeds. The RRs don’t want passenger business. Even if a train could make 150 mph constantly (impossible in curves and on steep grades) and never stop, it would still need much more than a day to make it from New York City to Los Angeles.

Except for the north-south coastal “corridors,” interstate passenger service will not happen as a significant interstate entity.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark