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

DNC Memorandum #15

From the office of the chairWOMAN, 30 November 2013

***Listen up! There are no apologies offered for the absence of memos since summer. This has been a terribly busy time for the chairWOMAN account having to further deal with the “Weiner Affair,” the IRS scandals, the Benghazi slaughter, Fast-and-Furious, and Hillary Clinton since she’s connected to all of them and has told me she’s mad as hell, had nothing to do with them, and won’t take it anymore. Add the fiasco vis-à-vis the rollout (or roll-off…little joke there) of the ACA and even a Nader Raider could understand the complicated spin involved. By the way, the rumor that Ms. Weiner lives in this country and stays married to the creep because she can’t drive a car in her own country, Saudi Arabia, is not true. She considers Hillary a role model for women with spousal perverts and follows her lead, which currently is attempting to raise enough funds to move to another state and run for the senate.

***IMPORTANT! The term Obamacare is no longer in use and any staffer using it will be shunted off to the Durbin Re-indoctrination Center & Gulag, with its particular emphasis on how to lie believably. The proper term is AFFORDABLE CARE ACT. Do not—NOT!—bring up this subject in town-hall meetings, whether in school gymnasiums or – more usually – in bars. If someone else does, simply switch the subject to something like FLOTUS’s latest treatise on peanut-butter-jelly sandwiches (bad) but never to Benghazi or – absolutely never – to Syria! Have bouncers on call for hecklers who claim the ACA is an oxymoron. If that doesn’t work, drive home the point that ACA dysfunction is, as usual, the fault of former POTUS Bush.

***POTUS is still considering instituting a Department of Gender and has requested another yellow/black/white/red paper on how to do this while still awaiting word from the LBGTQ group as to how many genders there are. This hasn’t been settled yet mainly because the American Conference of Transitioning and Ultimate Personhood (known for short as ACT-UP) still threatens to sue something or somebody if not included in the gender-count, but certainly not in the Q group. Also, a complaint from something called the Platonic Education Department Of Pleasing Habituations in Loving Eroticism (PEDOPHILE, for short) has been lodged with AG Holder, claiming gender-status and threatening action from some Catholic priests account violation of First Amendment rights.

***A word of caution: Since becoming Secretary of State, following in the footsteps of Hillary Clinton, and since he was a senator for much longer than she, John Kerry is an item, along with Clinton, to be handled with great care concerning the presidency-race in 2016. You might do well in meetings to mention age since Hillary will be 69 and Kerry 73 in 2016, while the chairWOMAN will be only 50…something to think about. Kerry once declared before a Senate committee that American GIs murdered 200,000 folks per year in Vietnam (about 1.6 million altogether) and Clinton claimed last year that an 11-minute you-tube movie in Cairo caused the slaughter of American officials in Benghazi. Both were lying, of course. Don’t bring these things up but if someone (you plant?) should ask about them…well…

***A number of if not most staffers are 26 or under. POTUS has suggested that the DNC encourage you to voluntarily remove yourselves from your parents’ healthcare insurance in the interest of magnanimously (straight from some teleprompter) exhibiting your patriotism in keeping the new millions being added to Medicaid from dying prematurely. Since legally he couldn’t do this and executive orders to take you off would look bad right now, especially with regard to more than a thousand other exemptions already made illegally…little joke there…and the big one concerning the unions to be made at midnight on some Friday, he is anxious for you to send money. POTUS has offered to autograph the cast of any affirming respondent with a broken limb or the lab report of anyone suffering from some dread disease or even a bad cold.

***DNC workers may moonlight in the evenings and during the weekends as Navigators and this sounds like a good deal for both experience and some extra cash to help in the withdrawal from parents’ insurance benefits. The training takes very little time since the healthcare web-site isn’t running correctly yet (and may never); however, POTUS insists that it be used. Navigators simply punch up the system on their computers and wait with their clients until something happens. This may take a few hours or a week since, as POTUS promised, some 30 million or so will be signing up for healthcare for the first time. At its current alleged capacity of processing 50,000 applications per day, this should last about 600 days, though predictable glitches and glitch-fixers and glitch-fixer-fixers may string this out into years. In the meantime, HHS Secretary Sibelius is urging people not to get sick or even fall for the next couple of years. Two complete baths or showers every day and washing hands every 15 minutes are suggested for escaping infectious diseases. Also, avoiding crowds except at POTUS speeches is recommended, though breathing through a mask might be a good idea.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Prof Cites Buccaneer Business

About the movie Captain Phillips, Mike Rivage-Seul, former professor of peace and social justice at Berea College, wrote that it was “mutatis mutandis” (a nice Latin flourish), in a column in the Lexington Herald-Leader of 23 November…sort of “all’s well that ends well.” He began with the wild-west Indians and transitioned into the Somalis’ piracy of the Maersk Alabama in 2009, sort of U.S. Cavalry morphed into the Navy Seals. He mentioned the main characters—Tom Hanks and Somali Barkhad Abdi—but that of the two the latter was splendid. Abdi emigrated with his family in 1999 to Minneapolis.

A small nit-pick: The professor claimed that “over-fishing in Somalia by factory ships from Europe and the U.S. has left tribal fishermen [presumably Somalis] without income.” Commercial fishing by the U.S. in Somalia—except in rivers and lakes—is impossible since Somalia, officially Muslim, is – yep – solid real estate, not an ocean. It even has a government that changes often as “tribal fishermen” vote the usual Islamic way, with bullets and machetes. Remember “Black-hawk Down?” Bill Clinton does.

Somalia lies on the Arabian Sea (north) and the Indian Ocean (south), the former measuring 1,491,127 square miles (average depth about 1.7 miles) and the latter a paltry 28,400,130 (average depth about 2.5 miles), meaning that the Somalis had only 29,891,257 square miles, roughly eight times the size of the U.S., in which to ply their trade in waters about two miles deep. Logical conclusion: The “tribal fishermen” had every right to resort to compensating circumstances, ergo, piracies and kidnappings, both lucrative substitutes for fishing in such cramped quarters.

Rivage-Seul: “The inattentive [folks like me…the great unwashed] will experience the simple catharsis afforded by such action thrillers.” He mentioned some things that in our “simple catharsis” we wouldn’t understand about the movie—globalization, national sovereignty and the military-industrial complex—presumably because we’re too dense. Wonder what a “complicated catharsis” might be? He didn’t say.

R-S launched into an explanation of “buccaneer business,” in which “multinational corporations act like lawless pirates” and generally create “noxious effects their investments have on local populations.” In domestic terms, he would cite Walmart and Target in places like Lexington and Berea…or maybe Bluegrass Field account its planes covering the great unwashed below with noxious jet-fuel exhaust/carcinogens.

Rivage-Seul, “Whether understood as such or not, Somalis [dense like us], ‘reparations’ could in effect be seized by attacking ships on the open seas.” Reparation is defined as “the act of making amends, offering expiation, or giving satisfaction for a wrong or injury.” So, the professor would insist that piracy is the fair—if illegal and bloody—way to go, the devil take the hindmost. He explained that it was just a highly financed buccaneer business competing with a more primitive poorly financed buccaneer business.

Then Rivage-Seul delivers the coup de grace by introducing the evil military-industrial-complex into the picture. Instead of the equally evil well-financed buccaneer businesses hiring their own mercenaries to protect their ships against the poverty-stricken Somalis they went begging to the U.S. military…maybe even to the (gasp) White House (at least in the movie), whereupon the Navy Seals (fanfare, please) in a wild and authentic operation freed the ship and Phillips while wasting some of the pirates.

Concluding his pièce de résistance, Rivage-Seul declared: “Hollywood can no longer portray Indians as savages.” Does this mean that others may do so? This completes the logical lineage, i.e., going from the wild-west “savages” through the rich business buccaneers through the poor business buccaneers through the sailors straight back to the “savages,” just the opposite of Custer’s last stand, wherein the “savages” (currently the defeated Somalis) prevailed.

Doubtlessly, “peace and social justice,” the professor’s area of expertise, comprise the compelling factor in Rivage-Seul’s essay, though one might say that “fighting fire with fire” was the operative element in the whole dustup. That somehow seems a bad fit for “peace and social justice.”

Strangely, Rivage-Seul finished with this sort of biased statement: “…the West has already been won, but the resources of Muslim tribals [sic] are still up for grabs.” (italics mine) Since the Muslim tribe-members comprise the poorly financed business buccaneers, one wonders what those resources are, especially since those Navy Seals have threatened to shut down the operation. Rivage-Seul’s intended message: Capitalism is BAD, even if it provides work for folks everywhere.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Sex & the Soldiers

On 17 November, the lady senator from New York was one level shy of hysteria on a Sunday talk-show with Martha Raddatz, who had a hard time getting a word in. I’ve watched two other lady senators on C-Span delivering withering lectures on the subject before that august body. The subject (again): sexual assaults in the military. The women want alleged perpetrators to be tried in civilian courts. A change in assault laws is before the Senate.

On C-Span back in the summer, a hearing by the Senate Armed Services Committee was aired, about a fourth of its 26 members being women, nearly all of them democrats. The subject of the hearing: rape in the military and the alleged lack of effort to do anything about it. The officers/witnesses—top brass—had to sit and take tongue lashings from the women senators, who knew as much about the military as a bullfrog knows about jet engines.

The 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 supposes that the number 26,000 was not just pulled out of a hat, but one also wonders how its validity was determined if there were no records supporting it. Did it derive from the women-troops just talking to each other and perhaps noting the information in their diaries, with the diaries somehow made available to somebody…maybe a female news-anchor?

Rape is the quintessential “he said, she said” thing, his word against hers. There are rarely witnesses to rape or even groping. So, even if rape-kit results point to intimacy they do not furnish facts concerning who did what absent physical injuries such as would be present in the case of an actual altercation between the players.

The female senators argue that the conviction-rate represents a military not policing itself adequately or conducting its tribunals according to law. A conviction rate of only 7% has to account for something, but all a woman has to do to be taken seriously is simply make the charge. The male in either civilian or military status is automatically presumed guilty until proven innocent, no matter the actual facts.

One senator gave a gory description of an assault (and others) at the Air Force Academy. It was discovered long ago that gender-integration in boot camps was loony-tunes and had to be stopped. Why not just set up military academies—like boot camp but on the college 4-year level—that are gender specific? That’s simple enough and the government wastes relentlessly the minute amount of cost involved.

The disgusting thing about that hearing (charade, actually) was that everyone in that room knew precisely what would virtually cut the incidences of rape or rape-accusations to nothing, to wit, taking the military back from the social engineers who have been wrecking it for a generation. Placing a handful of women in combat roles now only exacerbates the problem. They’re as fit for armed combat as they are to play in the National Football League…dead weight, taking the attention of fighting men from their jobs – breaking things and killing people.

Unisex is great for political-correctness methodology but it’s loony-tunes practically. If women are as good at making war as men are, let them form their own platoons, companies, brigades, etc. Let naval ships be either all-male or all-female. When the sexes are not thrown together, especially in high-hormone-mode connected to youth, they won’t commit hanky panky or groping or rape. This could be done practically overnight.

It won’t be done. The lady-senators would be horrified at such a thing. It’s more fun to chew-out hapless generals, who also know about the female come-on factor and the revenge-tool of rape-charge employed by a woman scorned, things the officers will never mention. The vapid Congressmen are incapable of facing the truth in the face of having to count on votes from the largest voting bloc—women. In short, common sense has no place in government.

As for the lady news-anchors who might be in on the alleged info (26,000)…while the military women dress modestly, at least in public, the TV gals do the come-on thing—plenty of cleavage and thigh, with body language to make the news sexy, no matter if it involves something like the Marathon bombers or a school-shooting. No wonder it’s called the “boob-tube.”

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Devious Democrat Boilerplate

In a Lexington [Ky.] Herald-Leader op-ed piece of 16 November, Al Smith said this: “Whether Tea Partiers, tax-hating, self-styled conservatives or opportunist politicians, the extremists sue to roll back revenues for libraries, scoff at early-childhood education, cheer cuts to food stamps, suppress child care for low-income workers, oppose a minimum wage hike and pray for health care reform to fail. That's the A list. Privatizing public schools and social security, blocking tax reform and ‘freeing up’ Wall Street and the big banks are the B list.”

Smith could have avoided the wordy categorizing of the insensitive monsters by simply using the term republicans. He was alluding to the cuts that have been triggered in the federal budget due to requirements of the 2011 Sequestration Act—the president’s baby—that was supposed to pressure Congress into doing his bidding. It didn’t work.

A bipartisan commission was concomitantly enacted to compose a deficit-reduction template that would satisfy every entity. Predictably, the commission couldn’t do that by the January 2013 deadline for triggering across-the-board cuts despite enormous pressure so the deadline was reset to March 2013—same result, involving $85-$100 billion annually. Wall Street? Obama has awarded it and insurance companies an unconscionable suck-up.

Even worse now, Obama’s rubber-stamp senators and congress-people are screaming over the chaos of the Affordable Care Act and his (their) oft-repeated LIE about what it would not do – cause people to lose satisfactory insurance. Senator Baucus, who slithered the ACA through the Senate in 2010, announced months ago that ADA was a train-wreck, with events since 01 October affirming.

Smith said that “red-state leaders” (translated white racist republicans) dislike Obama just like “1963 Dallas” (white prejudiced democrats) “seethed with hatred of JFK [President Kennedy]”…pretty strong stuff. He juxtaposed President Johnson’s “war on poverty” with a current “war on the poor,” wondering if the latter, fomented by evil republicans, had replaced the former, notwithstanding Obama’s promotion of and signature on the Sequestration Act.

Smith said: “Untroubled about sending hungry kids to school, reactionary forces in Washington have cut food stamps for 875,000 Kentuckians. Over three-fifths of food stamp recipients are children, or adults living with children.” Leading the “reactionary forces” is President Obama, who gladly signed the bill he meant to enhance his power only to find that it backfired and hurt all the people Smith lists. Treasury Secretary Lew called for replacing (actually repealing Sequestration) in October, thus repudiating the president who appointed him.

Smith said: “No longer a place of barefoot feudists, Kentucky abounds with champions for education… .” Barefoot feudists? With this demeaning statement, Smith turned to education, crediting the Kentucky Education Reform Act of 1990 for education improvement, but its main feature comprised payoffs for good test grades, triggering the predictable outcome—cheating on an inordinate level by teachers and administrators…stealing.

Much if not most of KERA has been chipped away, first de facto by actual educators ignoring it and later de jure by the legislatures that finally discovered how bad KERA was. According to the federal No Child Left Behind report for 2011, Kentucky met 13 of 25 target goals (52%). Since 2002, in only one year, 2006-07, was adequate yearly progress made in one subject, math. There was no other AYP in any year. For the sixth consecutive year in 2011, the federal education establishment instructed Kentucky to take corrective action.

In Kentucky’s Common Core tests for 2011-12, reading proficiency for middle and high school students was 51% and 56%, respectively; for math proficiency, 41% and 36%, respectively. The reading and math proficiencies for elementary school students were 48% and 44%, respectively. Two-thirds of high school students are math-ignorant. These figures largely represent the damage accruing to the disastrous KERA throughout the 1990s. The major “academic” thrust of KERA was self-esteem, with 2+2 not necessarily equaling 4.

KERA was a humongous pork-barrel exercise involving the highest tax increase in history at the time. If Smith thinks KERA helped Kentucky education he’s on another planet.

Smith finally wondered who might emerge and how he/she would fix the poverty-gap problem in Kentucky. He offered no suggestions, but the number of jobs lost during the Obama administration (coal, anyone?) will be hard to recoup. The actual unemployment rate of about 14% is damning the economy nationwide.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Degradation in High Places

The bane of democratic governance is comprised of incompetence or corruption or both, with an insidious political correctness damning every facet of the system, largely the reason for both of the above. This accounts in large part for the currently obvious decline of the U.S. as both a world leader and an institution free of the acceptance of perversion as normal. The unrelenting necessities for good governance are integrity and respect for both body and mind.

In the animal world there are “protected species,” not to be abused or otherwise disadvantaged. In U.S. society, at least two large species are protected—women and African-Americans. Political correctness, backed often by laws that are sometimes patently un-Constitutional, was never more in evidence than in the presidential election of 2008. A woman and an African- American (his self-identification) contended in the democrat primary, with the latter winning the nomination.

Since neither a woman nor a black had ever run for the office, political correctness demanded that it was time for one or the other to be elected, no matter if he/she lacked the sense to get in out of the rain. The candidates were like two peas in a pod politically and philosophically—socialists to the core…nothing to make either distinctive—with both raising tons of money and accusing the other of being unready to be president. In this, they were both right, sharing the same degree of incompetence.

The Congress and courts composed of a cross-section of the populace supposedly with enough members of sound minds to keep an errant president from wrecking the country are currently also damned by political correctness, incompetence, and opportunism to an extent unbelievable in modern times. The result is transparently obscene. No one is minding the store.

The main loser is integrity. The abilities of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to lie are unparalleled in officialdom. They stood in the Rose Garden and purposefully lied with regard to the Benghazi massacre, and Obama even advanced the lie to the UN two weeks later. Both knew the truth but had the automatic reflex many politicians share—LIE when caught. Clinton made up a tale in 2008 regarding her desperate escape from snipers in Bosnia in 1996, a humongous lie revealed in actual TV footage. Incompetent…or dumb?

Obama’s subterfuge vis-à-vis the so-called Affordable Care Act (no lost coverage) was matched only by that of some Congress-people. No republican in either house voted for ACA. It was passed by democrats on Christmas Eve night 2010, despite the fact that virtually no legislator had read the bill. That was dishonesty taken to a new low-level. Then-Majority Leader Pelosi proclaimed that no one would know what was in the Act until it was passed…and she was right. She probably still doesn’t know what’s in the Act.

While running for reelection throughout 2009-2012, the president knowingly (unless plainly stupid) lied through his teeth repeatedly and often that no one would lose his/her insurance as a result of ACA. To tell the truth would have deep-sixed his chances for staying in office. This narcissistic, arrogant, in-your-face, public deviousness is intolerable in any official, much less the president. It’s grounds for impeachment even though teleprompters do not place their puppets under oath. The republican-controlled House is too timid to act account fearing racism tag.

Obama has either lied, been ignorant or devious concerning Fast-and-Furious, the IRS scandals, Solyndra payoffs, Benghazi, ACA, Libya invasion, Syria, and even approved infanticide, lying to himself that the partial-birth victim was no more than an exposed appendix. One of his early acts in office in 2009 was to conspire with Senator Durbin to deny Obama’s vacated Senate seat to the man who under the requirements of both the U.S. and Illinois Constitutions was appointed (physically locked out at one time), not that Obama had spent much time in that seat.

Morally, the president became an even emptier suit when he “evolved” from his marriage position (one man, one woman) in 2008 to his enlightened position in 2012—let the homosexuals get legally married and sponge to the greatest possible extent off the government…and make real whoopee. When perversion grips a nation, it’s doomed, just like old Rome and Greece, not to mention Sodom and Gomorrah—God’s justice.

When historians look at the Obama record some day they will discover unbelievably inept, even malicious, governance in his attempt to drag this great country into perversion, socialism and worse.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Tyranny & Veterans Day

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As in most centuries before,
The twenty-first begins with war
When evil men in Allah’s name
Torch innocents in jet-fuel flame;
Their leaders learn that they will pay
In Afghan mountains day by day,
Or in Iraqi towns and sand
An awesome price when good men stand.

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

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

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

National Morality Gone South

The Supreme Court is considering another “prayer problem” currently, petitioners insisting that the separation of church and state (this term nowhere mentioned in the U.S. Constitution) is violated when anyone is subjected to hearing a prayer in any public place such as a public school or governmental setting such as a town’s legislative session. This is another ho-hum issue, with God certainly unbothered, but atheists and maybe Muslims unable to handle PTPD – Post Traumatic Prayer Disorder.

It’s unlikely that God will be erased soon from governmental entities such as buildings and currency and prayers in the Congress, as well as being a guiding factor in the way many people live, but the erasure is at least a de facto matter now that will, as the president might say, “evolve” into de jure status when national secularism, now well on its way, reaches full ascendancy.

Morality is established individually and is operative as long as a citizen’s practice of it does not adversely affect another citizen, at least in a civilized society. National morality is established when the majority of citizens are in agreement concerning things that are morally acceptable and enact laws to reflect the consensus, with friction among the citizens as a predictable result. One person’s morality may be another’s orgy.

During World War I, in which the U.S. began its rapid journey to world leadership, a main contention in the Congress and country concerned alcoholic beverages being made, transported and consumed—a well-defined “morality issue.” The result was the Eighteenth Amendment ratified in January 1919—Prohibition. Sobriety and a public protected from alcohol usage prevailed.

Myriad state laws at one time prohibited the practice of sodomy, a “moral issue” usually defined as use of sex organs for other than procreation purposes (homosexual behavior), and in 1986 – Bowers v. Hardwick – the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that state sodomy laws did not violate the U.S. Constitution's right to privacy, though the laws were virtually unenforceable.

“Blue Laws” regulating what could and could not be effected on Sunday were introduced in colonial Virginia in 1620. Since then, states have enacted all sorts of “blue laws” having to do with commerce, transportation, entertainment, with religion being the main driver of these laws. Even laws prohibiting sale of liquor on election days remain in force, though not account religious reasons.

How things have changed! As the country has become more secular and religion has become more “watered-down” and ridiculed, these actions have all gone by the board. Prohibiton was repealed in December 1933 before it could even be evaluated, a mere 14 years. Given an entire generation, it might have made a tremendous difference socially. Heroin and crack pale into insignificance when their usage is compared to the results vis-à-vis that of alcohol.

In 366 U.S. 420 (1961), the Supreme Court ruled that some “blue laws” were indeed constitutional, not on a religious basis but for the welfare of the people. Since then, all “blue laws” have been set aside and anything goes on Sunday, though alcohol still may not be sold on Sunday in some areas.

Laws against sodomy prevailed in the U.S. right through this century. In a 6-3 ruling of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Lawrence vs. Texas (2003), sodomy laws in Texas were considered unconstitutional, effectively deeming all state laws against sodomy unconstitutional as well.

These examples indicate how the national morality has changed, especially in just the last 80 years (since Prohibition) but more markedly in just the last decade as the nation has plunged into an almost deification of what the founders and two centuries of their heirs considered unacceptable morally, culminating in a sort of acceptable debauchery.

The elitists love Plato’s “republic design:” (1) Philosopher kings to govern and furnish intellect; (2) Guardians to keep order and furnish will; (3) Ordinary citizen/workers to furnish appetites. Morality is whatever the kings approve, enforced by the police, and hopefully satisfies the people, no matter the perversions involved. Check out today’s circumstances and compare with King Obama’s imprimatur on same-sex marriage and forcing homosexuality on the military.

Oh yes. Plato was perhaps the ancient Greeks’ highest profile homosexual/pedophile and probable pederast. Look at the current U.S. “republic scene” and weep as it goes the way of Plato’s republic—rotting inwardly.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Beshear—Obama’s Fair-Haired Boy

Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear attained “fair-haired-boy” status the other Sunday morning when he appeared on an elitist top-guru talking-head show to extol the virtues of the Affordable Care Act, which becomes more unaffordable as facts become known, and to finger the president as perhaps the best prez since Lincoln…maybe even Jefferson…or (gasp and a palpitation) Washington. Indeed, Prez Obama took time from his busy driving-range duties to phone Steve with compliments fit for a czar.

Recently-arrived Lexington Herald-Leader political writer Sam Youngman (04 November) even said one’s imagination would not be stretched a hallucination too far to see ol’ Steve trotting in to take over the HHS barn now patrolled by the honorable Kathleen Sibelius, there to knock the stalls of three years of you know what. In Boston, the Big O said Steve was like a man possessed with helping more people but lots of folks just think Steve’s merely possessed.

Youngman was actually doing a mild hatchet job on Rand Paul (plagiarized perfect Wikipedia) and threw in the Beshear glorification to maybe help change the state from red to blue. Not likely, especially in light of the current exposure of the Big O’s outrageous three years of lies regarding the sacred ACA, not to mention ratcheting up everyone’s electricity costs while killing the coal industry, as he promised to do in 2008.

Neither Beshear nor Obama mentioned 280,000 Kentuckians losing their current health-coverage plans, as reported by the Associated Press on 03 November. This applies even in state government, of which I have first-hand knowledge—increased premiums, co-pays and deductibles. Reason: the policies don’t jibe with Big O’s infallible mandates. Accounted as brilliant, maybe he can explain why a 75-year-old man should pay for an expensive policy covering gynecological problems.

Give Beshear some credit…or blame, depending on one’s take. He was smart enough to use the state option with the Big O picking up the cost—more than $250 million—to create the online signup site. Obama must not have used the same outfit for the national site, since he’s spent $600 million on it and it’s nowhere near ready for use and may never be. Maybe his rich pals at bankrupt Solyndra got the job…or folks just like them—presidential cronies.

So…practically all the 31,000 or so Kentuckians who’ve signed up have been herded onto Medicaid, paying no premiums while the rest of the folks in the U.S. pick up their tabs. In the other 36 states, choosing to let the Big O do it all, chaos reigns and folks are finding that the president actually meant in 2008 and thereafter that folks could keep the plans and doctors that NOT THEY but Obama liked.

The prez usually blames George Bush for everything that goes wrong but this time he’s blaming the insurance companies for deep-sixing his promises that folks had nothing to worry about. The insurers, while not being totally insensitive, nevertheless see bankruptcy as their final resting place (Obamacare is interested in that subject) if they inculcate the ACA mandates without concomitantly increasing premiums, co-pays and, of course, huge deductibles, thus putting policy-holders in a brand-new bind.

Lately, the White House info-machine has propagandized that the prez actually hedged his promises with the caveat that they depended upon the insurance suppliers being good guys and maybe emulating government, but printing money to offset bankruptcy is not within their purview, thus the skyrocketing charges and adverse policy conditions.

Getting something for nothing (or at least very little) has always been the goal for most people whether they admit it or not. It’s a lead-pipe cinch that the prez has never read the ACA and knows little more than he’s been told. Nor did/does the Congress-people who passed it. His czars wrote the bill, which is designed to drive the nation into socialized medicine (single payer) as rates explode and the ACA system crumbles. This has been his plan all along, so to that extent he’s in the saddle. As for details, he either lies or is just plain ignorant…or both.

Bill Clinton was impeached for telling a humongous lie that didn’t affect the nation. Nixon resigned over nothing affecting the government. Obama’s lies, publicly much better documented over years, are serious enough for impeachment. Won’t happen—racism, of course.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Presidential Fraud

In the 1990s, mainly when Brerton Jones was Kentucky governor and the legislature was solidly democrat-controlled, he and the lawmakers decided to tell the healthcare insurance providers what they would cover. Since citizens were lawfully unable to contact out-of-state insurers they were trapped.

The providers were in business to show profits to their shareholders, not necessarily keep everyone well. The actuaries discovered in various stages that such profits—at least under the current premium costs—would not be possible. There were about 46 of these companies and they began shutting down business in Kentucky. They simply left the state one-by-one until there was only one (maybe two) insurers left.

The guv and lawmakers discovered they could not demand business to do certain things. So, without competition among insurers, the citizens had no alternatives. The elected representatives might have attempted a sort of socialized system such as that enacted in Massachusetts later, but they didn’t…maybe too gun-shy account the public outrage.

Flash forward! The president’s lackeys rolled out a healthcare bill and the democrat-controlled Congress, without even reading the humongous volume of words and terms and references to other laws with which they were totally unfamiliar, enacted it on a technicality in the Senate that was probably unlawful.

Congress enacted into law exactly what insurance providers would cover in all policies. Rather than just “leave the state” (or nation), providers merely started canceling policies, Kentucky-like. Under the premium remittances, they could not pay claims and make a profit.

The president has promised in speeches for years that this would not happen, i.e., that policy-holders satisfied with their plans and doctors would not lose either, knowing full well all the time that it would happen. If he didn’t know that simple truth, one can judge his competence. He committed fraud. In the process he continually lied, but not under oath (by teleprompter), so he continues to speechify but on a different basis.

Caught in the lie, Obama’s strategy now, as spouted by his bureaucrats, is that insurance companies are to blame because they didn’t tailor their policies according to law, thus immediately raising premiums. Obama feels that he and the Congress (actually the czars) can legislate insurance provisions, notwithstanding the outrageous personal cost-increases that the appropriate adjustments will incur. The policy-losers are forced to hunt for new insurance they can hopefully afford (realizing outrageous deductibles), though some might get government subsidies to help with increases.

The subsidies will not likely be of much help. They will also be taken from the budget that’s already trillions of dollars in the red. The next demand, when the problem becomes more full-blown, will be for tax increases on everyone. The catch: Just under half of households in the U.S. pay NO taxes, so the half that works will get the bill. This kills incentive and, of course, jobs.

The president – or somebody – decided that the provision requiring businesses with at least 50 fulltime employees to insure everyone in January 2014 was a bad one and somehow changed the date to January 2015 without Congressional approval. Businesses are already in the process of putting employees on less than 30 hours a week to dodge that law, creating a part-time uninsured work force. The unions (Obama’s water-carriers) have discovered that their plans are in jeopardy and are demanding to be exempted from Obamacare, just another of many exemptions, among them the lawmakers and their staffs. The hoi polloi can eat cake.

HHS Chairman Sibelius said in the Thursday House-hearing that this is not socialized medicine since it deals in insurance and not government-run healthcare. It IS socialized medicine since the government is calling all the shots. The government apparently tried to handle Medicare after it was passed in 1965. In 1982, the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act made it easier and more attractive for health maintenance organizations to contract with the Medicare program. Claims pass through insurance companies now, not the government.

On that basis, one can only wonder how fouled-up Obamacare will be in very short order, not even able in three years to construct a web-site to handle applications and creating a system costing tens of millions requiring “negotiators” to guide the great unwashed through it…25 minutes for an individual and 45 for a family.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Evolutionary Ecologist & Scientific Inquiry

Retired math teacher with a master’s in evolutionary ecology Roger Guffey’s op-ed of 25 October in the Lexington [Ky.] Herald-Leader was headlined “In defense of science and Kentucky’s new [education] standards.” His issue mainly concerned people objecting to the teaching of “[human] evolution and climate change” in the public schools. There’s no argument with evolution per se as it relates to things not human and there’s no argument with climate undergoing change constantly.

Even bona fide evolutionary-ecologists concede that global heat (without known industrialization) in 1100 AD was much greater than currently and that hot-cool cycles have obtained through recorded history. After the torrid 1930s-40s in the industrialized U.S., the “climate experts” insisted in the 1970s that a horrendous ice-age was threatening the world, as happened in one of the ice-ages (maybe the third) when the Ohio River was dug by a glacier either going or coming. After 40 years, still no ice-age!

Guffey worried that “creationism” was about to be taught as a science, though it’s always been presented as just a theory, and that will not change. Creationists hold that God created everything out of nothing in a way described in the Genesis account. Guffey knows both things so his actual intention in the op-ed was the putdown of “ignoramuses” who believe in creationism.

Guffey wrote that “belief systems lie completely outside the realm of scientific inquiry,” notwithstanding that his non-belief concerning creationism comprises a “belief system” of his own, i.e., that science has systematically disproved creationism, though there’s no scientific evidence relative to the origin of earth or anything connected thereto, only theories. I’m a creationist but I don’t believe the earth “happened” spontaneously 6,000 years ago and couldn’t care less if others believe otherwise.

Appropriate definitions. Science: “the state of knowing: knowledge as distinguished from ignorance or misunderstanding.” Inquiry: “examination into facts or principles.” Principle: “a comprehensive and fundamental law, doctrine, or assumption.” (Merriam-Webster Collegiate, 11th edition)

By definition, consequently, scientific inquiry is gaining knowledge by examination into facts or comprehensive, fundamental laws, doctrines, or assumptions. Everything, including belief systems of any kind, is susceptible to scientific inquiry. Creationism is a religious belief-system Guffey submitted to scientific inquiry and determined its status (nonexistent), thus contradicting himself and merely opinionating, as a creationist does.

Using scientific inquiry, scientists developed the atomic bomb in the 1940s, a cold technological instrument. Guffey said “the religious and philosophical values we possess” are outside “the realm of scientific inquiry.” Yet, the decision concerning the bomb was based on scientific inquiry, i.e., determining how many people could justifiably die (especially U.S. GIs) on the basis of the values held by most Americans. The same situation obtained any time a field commander decided upon an attack…or not, determining the worth of a project vis-à-vis deaths and destruction.

Guffey said the biological constants that drive evolution are reproduction and competition; however, the constant that drives evolution is mutation, however structured or in what manner, competitive or otherwise. Reproduction is fairly automatic and predictable, but mutations can even be produced by outside influences—hybrid corn, for instance.

I hope the climate will be discussed in education in an informed manner. Global temperature, virtually unaffected by people, has not warmed in 15 years and sea-ice in the Antarctic region is at the highest volume ever recorded. The UN-IPCC (climate gurus) has been thoroughly discredited (Manhattan under water by 2100) not just through its main gurus’ self-admitted fraud of 2009 but by credible scientific findings. Students should understand the purely political aspect of the alarmism.

Non-creationists are driven by jealousy accruing to their inability to create anything. They can merely use, modify, combine, rearrange or otherwise configure elements that have always existed in some form to make—not create—things. They treat human evolution as a science instead of a theory to convince students that a supreme being is an impossibility because scientists cannot create (or even understand) it.

Periodically, the “missing link” in the evolution chain is ballyhooed as being discovered, along with pictures of skulls and bones, sometimes artificially fleshed out to resemble at least a biped, though usually with a lot of hair. Rubbish!

Educationally, after the legislature’s 1990 education-reform debacle harming two generations of students anything looks good.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

An Emperor with No Clothes?

During the Obama rule, the long-of-tooth have watched the United States of America morph into the United States of Monarchy, which is defined as “undivided rule or absolute sovereignty by a single person.” Most strikingly, this metamorphosis has happened because the nation is currently damned by a feckless Congress too timid to handle its responsibility as the “third leg of the governmental stool.” Most likely, the main reason has to do with being called “racist” if one seriously questions the ruler.

The prez set the stage (July 2009) soon after his first inauguration when, without knowing any facts of a matter, he, exhibiting monarchical elitism/arrogance, accused a white policeman of “acting stupidly.” If he was unhappy, he could have contacted the Cambridge police chief but chose instead to make an issue of the matter in letting the hoi polloi know who was boss.

Before that, he had announced that he would close Gitmo, but Gitmo remains. The Congress deserves some credit since it turned the prez around on that one. He learned then to use executive orders (unilateral governance/bypassing Congress) to get his agenda in place whenever possible. In March 2009, the ruler took over General Motors and Chrysler and using tax monies led both into bankruptcy, wiping out the shareholders. Chrysler was sold to Fiat. In that deal, the U.S. lost $1 billion. Taxpayers likely will not recoup the federal funds shot on GM, either.

In 2009, King Barack won the Nobel Peace Prize, mostly because he had proved uber-monarchical status by sticking Congress in the eye. About the same time, he went to Stockholm to be THE MOST POWERFUL MONARCH there by announcing the potential end of the world through manmade global warming only to discover that his subject was a complete hoax, as it is today. The perpetrators of the hoax (Gore’s inconvenient truth) condemned themselves account having little enough sense to explain their perfidy through e-mails.

In January 2011, the prez spoke at a memorial service in Tucson and used the occasion to unofficially kickoff his kingship-run for 2012. Had them in the aisles! The king then began to show inordinate power by informing other heads of state that they had to give up their positions and turn their countries over to the rabble, like the Muslim Brotherhood. The various rabbles thought he meant he was sending in the Marines to do the deed but didn’t understand monarchical lying, so they languish. Syria’s Assad just laughed, and he’s still laughing.

King Barack in March 2011 realized that he hadn’t proved his mettle by winning a war, something any despot worth the name must do. The troops he needed were languishing (and dying for no reason) in Afghanistan so he looked around for a country weak enough to overcome in what he said would be days, not weeks. He found one—Libya—but knew the Congress (necessary to declare war) would never go along since Libya posed no threat to any country.

So…the king didn’t bother with Congress, and the Congress was too weak or working so hard on campaigning that the Constitution meant nothing to it, either. King Barack Hussein twisted NATO’s arm for some help since not a drop of U.S. or NATO’s blood could be risked and the U.S. and NATO (mostly just the king—the others ran out ammo) simply bombed the bejesus out of Libya for seven long and bloody months, killing women, children, demolishing buildings—a sort of Muslim-like operation, maybe the king’s pet method, too.

Libya’s population was 2 million less than that of New York City and it had 76,000 troops compared to the king’s 1.6 million. Just Britain, France and Germany boasted another 664,100 boots, comprising a force of 2.2 million troops to overcome wicked, powerful Qaddafi, who was fighting al Qaeda in his country at the time. Now, thanks to the king and NATO, al Qaeda virtually owns Libya.

Oh yes…Obamacare! The king ruled that the monarchy should rule everyone’s health matters, including the end of them. He’s ruled which parts will be in force and which will not (illegal except for kings). Congress-people (okay, just democrats), trying to get home for Christmas in 2010, passed Obamacare on a technicality without even bothering to read the huge legislation. They’re finding out now in spades that the program is in a shambles and insurance companies are canceling policies by the thousands in anticipation of a huge windfall from King Barack’s treasures, mostly borrowed from China, a perpetual mortgage on his subjects, a gift to Wall Street friends.

Result: the emperor seems to have no clothes.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Unintended Consequences

Unfortunately, programs inculcated as a nation drives itself toward becoming a welfare state are configured with little thought of conditions obtaining beyond their enacting time-frames. In 1937, when Social Security became operative, average life expectancy for men and women born that year was 63 and 65, respectively, meaning that multitudes were never expected to draw benefits. Those born in 1900 had life-expectancies of 46 and 48 years respectively, meaning that most of them were not expected to live to retirement age or even close.

The law of unintended consequences always plagues good intentions. When Medicare became operative fulltime in 1967, life expectancy for men and women was 67 and 75 years, respectively (all races). The government outlay in Medicare payments in 1967 was $3.4 billion. The accumulative inflation-rate since 1967 is 600%, so that figure was $20.4 billion in today’s dollars. The Medicare outlay this year will be $588.7 billion minus $78.1 billion in premiums for a total of $510.6 billion, or an increase in 46 years of 2,003%, enormous by any standard.

Population increased 1967-2013 from 200 million to 310 million—55%—so that has to be factored in the equation—more people living longer—thus an increase in Medicare payments could not have been expected to amount to just 55%. People born this year have life expectancies of about 76 and 81 years, respectively, for men and women. These statistics are from HHS, U.S. government. Twenty-five percent of Medicare payments are made in the last year of an old codger’s life, thus adding to the problem – age-weakened/sickened people living much longer than anticipated in 1967 or even now. An 85-year-old male in 2010 could expect to live 7 more years, according to HHS.

Social Security collections and benefits are based on irrefutable data and therefore totally unsusceptible to corruption. Contrarily, Medicare and Obamacare are based on what the market/government will bear, both honestly and dishonestly. Suppose Medicare payments had merely quintupled (increased by 500%) since 1967 as the population increased by a tenth or so of that percentage. The outlay in 2013 would be about $100 billion, not $510.6 billion. The costly difference between SS and these programs accrues to the fact that people/corporations/pharmaceuticals/government and the medical profession have vested interests in them, with profit and/or corruption the driving forces and virtually no accountability.

The national debt stands at $17 trillion, far beyond comprehension. Annual deficits run at $1 trillion, meaning the nation subsists on borrowed money without a prayer under current circumstances to crawl out of the hole, just mostly pay the interest on debt and print money. Obamacare is slated to cost $1.8 trillion over the next decade, with the government claiming $771.3 billion in revenue to take care of new Medicaid expenses, not nearly covering the shortfall.

Another $1 trillion is slated for spending on subsidies until 2023 for insurance payments for individuals making up to nearly $46,000 per year, $94,200 for a family of four. This should give an idea of what the government expects the insurance premiums to be—out of sight. This leads to the obvious design of the president, to wit, keep raising taxes—everyone’s taxes—to pay for a program so absolutely unpredictable as to be beyond reason.

The figures are shocking, especially when thinking of the immense graft and waste that will attach to Obamacare, just as with Medicare and Medicaid. That which belongs to the government belongs to no one and is thus subject to whatever fraud/gaming that can be contrived to subvert it. The projected ten-year spending of $2.8 trillion means nothing. No one has any idea what the actual cost will be except that it will be far more than projected.

The president understands the pitfalls and by executive order or some such instrument nullified until 2015 the hugely important part of Obamacare (enacted for enforcement in January 2014) requiring businesses to furnish employee-insurance via government fiat, the result being businesses installing part-time jobs to beat the law. This enhances the recession and makes the elections in 2014 critical to the nation’s solvency. The shutdown that has just been lifted only puts off until after January the same battle over righting the U.S. financially, with a new threat of shutdown.

There have been no winners in October, but plenty of whiners.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

The Redtape Letters

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

My Dear Gullible,

You mentioned in your last letter that you had been to church with your girlfriend but didn’t indicate how serious she is about religion, though the fact that she goes to church absent some sort of coercion suggests that (horrors) she may be devout, in which case I offer some info regarding the Force and religion, firstly, that they are mutually exclusive. Religion is pervasive in this country, of course, and most citizens claim to be religious, though many say they are simply “spiritual,” not loyal to any creed, denomination or church. These folks are relatively harmless but devout believers form a formidable roadblock to success. So-called bedrock religious principles such as worship, fidelity, only heterosexual marriage as normative, same-sex marriage as sinful and tithing as just the minimum in supporting religious causes are absolute anathema to the Force, to which religion actually is the “opium of the people,” as suggested by Marx, a belief in a god and in a hereafter.

In times past, the drivers of the Force have consciously opposed the church, especially using the separation-of-church-and-state requirement as the weapon, but this has been largely unsuccessful since the Judeo-Christian God is not only mentioned in the Constitution but seems (erroneously, of course) to be its foundation and the term “God” appears on currency, buildings, government documents, etc., even at the Supreme Court. There has been much success but the battle is tiring and too lengthy. Organizations such as the ACLU and Democrat Party have made dramatic strides but haven’t made a dent in removing nativity scenes at Christmas, for instance. Even though the culture becomes more secular and even hedonistic every day, the people insist upon keeping religious entities in place, thus salving their “souls,” I guess. As Marx said, it is the drug that gives them some sort of high though even by their own religious standards they fall far short of deserving anything but harsh justice, not mercy.

Religion is driven by the enemy, of course, though not in the usual way. The cultural trend toward hedonism, especially as it is fueled by various perversions, connects the enemy to religion. Just as boot camp is designed to break a recruit and then rebuild him, the Force demands the dismantling of a governmental system in order to rebuild it. Government systems usually implode rather than being overcome by outside forces…internal rot, in other words. This is happening in the U.S., thus making our work so much easier. Using the courts that are either grossly incompetent or perverted or both, devotees to perversions are evoking decisions that run counter to religious principles and thus counter to civility, these disruptions absolute musts in the scheme of the Force. An example is the breakup of the family, the fundamental unit of society. The Bible insists that marriage is possible only between a man and woman and nearly all the states have laws and constitutional amendments affirming that religious and obviously biological mandate but corrupt judges have ruled this to be discriminatory against homosexuals and therefore unconstitutional. So, now it is legal in some states for men to marry men and women to marry women, never mind that this runs counter to the very definition of marriage, its most important facet being the propagation of the race. Two men or two women can’t conceive a child, obviously, thus the government merely places its imprimatur on sexual perversion, the sanctioning of some sort of lust, perhaps.

Religion also demands that fidelity in marriage be observed, but the society is more and more accepting of infidelity as not only cute but a pathway to happiness. This is seen in popular TV shows and movies in which family normalcy is shown to be built on mistrust and sleaze. The same is true in the modern novels and other literature. This worship of adultery and fornication, as well as the current glorification of homosexual behavior, is replacing the worship of God with what the enemy’s advocates term as worshiping the devil and rotting from the inside, which, of course it is, the very thing that breaks the society and makes it vulnerable to radical change…sort of the fact that standing for nothing eventuates in falling for anything. This is not all pure luck, however, since the Force has operatives like me in the entertainment and publishing industries, as well as in government itself. The president, for instance, announced that he had “evolved” from the one-man/one-woman marriage-stance in 2008 to approval of same-sex marriages by 2012 and had directed the attorney general not to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act enacted into law in the 1990s. This was an un-Constitutional, impeachable act on his part but demonstrates a method used by the Force to introduce chaos into the society, the better to overcome it and implant the Force’s system, i.e., the president, an obvious supporter of the Force, governs in large part in every area through executive orders, thus bypassing the legislative and court systems. His claim to be a Christian lacks credibility since the Bible is quite clear about these matters, but he is wise enough to claim Christianity since that belief is vital in elections.

Organized religion has also been infiltrated. As the church has stagnated and then started downward in membership and influence it has attempted to attract congregants by appearing more “worldly,” for want of a better term. The Force has representatives in this area, who have been successful in efforts such as making same-sex marriage biblically approved through weird interpretations of scripture (or none at all…just forget the Holy Book). Even church leaders as high in the order as bishops and heads of denominations openly live with homosexual partners, all in the name of honoring political correctness instead of biblical values, as the enemy claims. The result is further rot, a sort of sticking one’s thumb in God’s eye. Worship services feature rock bands and singers designated as worship-teams, which both sound and look the part of the rock scene. Preachers drone on about togetherness and love as if love is something that drives everything, even the acceptance/approval of something as obscene as homosexual behavior. This rot, as claimed by the enemy, is hastening the country toward the Force. It’s worth noting that the highest profile Greek philosopher and, some say, an articulator of Western Thought was also the highest profile homosexual/pedophile/pederast, as were the movers and shakers in both Greek and Roman antiquity. The Greco/Roman empires rotted out as their leaders abjured Christian principles and engaged in perverse hedonistic practices, the perfect model for destroying civility and replacing it by the Force.

It’s worth noting, also, that Islam—teaching “death to the infidel”—is constantly touted in the U.S. now as a religion, one of its other features being that a Moslem man can have four wives and may discard any one of his harem at any time without official sanction. Most of the president’s childhood was spent in a Moslem home and that may account for his cavalier approach to marriage. Accounting Islam as a religion, placing it on the same plane as Judeo-Christianity, cheapens the latter, another element of importance to the Force.

In short, have nothing to with religion except expressing an avid disparagement of it, except for Islam and its bent toward chaos and death. Believe none of it. Ballyhoo its constraints as stupid and old-fashioned. I’m not suggesting that you perform acts of perversion yourself, only that you approve of them as normal. I’m not meddling but do advise you to dump this girlfriend. People like her can be very persuasive, but believing in God is anti-Force to the core. Be fair and attend a sermon at a mosque. Don’t believe anything you hear there, either, but just appreciate the difference. Islamists can also be dangerous to the Force (or any system because of Moslem segments such as al Qaeda) but they can help in perverting the U.S. government.

As ever,
Redtape

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Redtape

The Screwtape Letters by the noted author C.S. Lewis is one of my favorite books. The long letters were written by a man for the purpose of instructing his nephew in how to evangelize an ordinary man against God and into following Satan and going to hell. I’ve been working on a book probably titled the Redtape Letters, with a man instructing his nephew vis-à-vis politics and how to guide the nation into socialism (the Force). Here is a letter:

Dear Nephew,

An overriding subject in U.S. society, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, is race or ethnicity-insensitivity or color-apprehension or any term having to do with the fact that white people are routinely accused of being guilty of something related to it. There’s racism – the short definition of which is “racial prejudice or discrimination” – in every culture or people-group but in the U.S. racism is confined as an attribute only of white folks. This is true within much of the white community itself, especially among those like myself, devotees to the Force. The charge or even admission-of by white people like me of racism is used in many areas – political, religious, social, cultural…you get the picture. Even the president – especially the president – has made use of this subject, whether in calling attention to himself or accusing others of pointing attention to either him or other blacks. In 2008, when you were barely a teen and might not have noticed, the president as a then-candidate made a famous speech in Germany, with its most salient point being that he was somehow “different from what Germans might have expected,” i.e., that he should have been white, perfectly understandable, of course, since the black population is only 14% of the total U.S. population. In the first half of last century, German leaders simply used the army to wipe out minorities, certainly not elect them to office.

To be sure, racism is a moral issue and is an attitude never to be tolerated, at least under normal circumstances; however, sometimes fire has to be fought with fire in societies in which malice can be a motivator encouraging governmental disruption/dysfunction and even oppression of the targets of racists. In the U.S., 90% of racists are republicans, easily proven in black voting patterns. Blacks vote as a 95% bloc favoring democrats against republicans, the vast majority of whom are white, thus the proof. The president accented this fact in an interview in Philadelphia in 2008 when he said that the typical white person was like his late (white) grandmother, who raised him, i.e., that she was wary of people not like her—him, in other words. This explanation of racism was brilliant of him, a first-hand example, though his grandmother probably didn’t have horns (little joke there). This interview was on the day after an entire speech on the subject of race in which the president exhorted white racist-Americans to try to understand the president’s black non-racist minister, the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, who had publicly and justifiably exhorted God to damn America because, for instance, a previous president (white, of course) had ordered the unspeakable destruction of Hiroshima. This ended WWII and saved millions of lives but you needn’t bother with that fact as you discuss racism (racially motivated mistreatment of the Japanese) with your friends.

So, you see – at least I hope you see – that there’s a benign use to be made of a bad thing. Usually, this use accrues to a political reason. Some would claim that the president was playing the race card, but actually he was educating the republican citizenry, namely, imposing upon it the guilt it so richly deserves. In the process, he used an important tool of the Force—class warfare. Class warfare sounds like a bad thing, but it’s good in that opposition to a good thing, like a level playing field, can be divided in order to conquer. This would not be possible, of course, if democrats were also racist but, while admitting they, too, are mostly white, I assure you that democrats form the party of compassion, goodwill, color-blindness, ethnicity-centeredness and warm hugs all around.

In the final analysis, it can be said that racism accrues to the slavery question, though just how, no one ever seems to explain. Slavery was abolished nearly 150 years ago and the current president is black. However, racial antagonisms have never quite disappeared, an expected eventuality of the bloodiest war in probably the world’s history until then. Descendents of slaves justifiably hate most, not all, white people, since some, not all, are the descendents of some slave-owners, while descendents of the 600,000 or so white soldiers who died in the war freeing slaves seem to exhibit an unjustifiable attitude resenting their loss. After all, war is war. You must be careful in this area as you make your points, hopefully in favor of the philosophy of the Force, which is diametrically opposed to republicanism. It’s true, as I’m sure you’ve heard, that the democrats stood in the way of civil rights legislation in the 1960s, while republicans furnished the votes to make it successful. In 1966, for instance, the Congress was 68% democrat, but these are facts I’m giving you so you can construct arguments to explain them away, the main attribute of any serious scholar.

Admittedly, there are rare cases of reverse-racism, i.e., a black person certainly inadvertently casting aspersions/insults at a person of another race. This well documented incident – the president accusing a white policeman of acting stupidly – will come up in discussions, always by a republican thug. You need to explain that the president was probably just very tired, as he was during his campaign when he alluded to the 57 states he had visited and had only one more to go. The proper riposte is always to insist that a sinner should never cast a stone at another sinner, though the president was perfectly innocent of any racism as proven by his selection of multitudes of white czars to run the government on the philosophy of the Force.

Don’t be afraid to discuss race but be sure you have created the proper spin for every eventuality.

As ever,
Redtape

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Healthcare or Insurance Windfall?

With the government shut down and the president throwing public temper-tantrums, people are supposed to be applying now for health insurance unless they’re already covered, either privately or through employer plans. They’re being introduced to the insurance-angle of Obamacare, actually what the whole program is about.

Obamacare is less about health (the U.S. has the best healthcare worldwide) than about the insurance business, provider of bottomless pockets of cash for its lobbyists. Obama speaks now not about health but about health-insurance for everyone, though the homeless, the working-poor and the families on welfare will continue to go to the emergency-room or other treatment-centers just as they always have, with payments for their care made by the insured, also known as taxpayers.

There are four insurance levels—bronze, silver, gold and platinum. HHS seems to consider the second-tier silver plan as the one most likely to be used (Forbes). Though costs vary state-to-state (unfair but true), the average monthly-premium for this plan is $328, with the deductible at $2,550 for a combined yearly outlay of $6,486 before any benefit occurs.

Actually, all bets are off because no one seems to know exactly what’s in Obamacare, just as House Minority-Leader Pelosi said would be the case until the law was passed. It’s been passed and the president probably knows less about it than anyone else…except Pelosi, of course. Both know, however, that Congress-people and their staffers are largely exempt, with taxpayers ponying up for their goodies.

The prez and his party—elitists, all—figure the great unwashed lack sense enough to understand the insurance gig so $67 million has been spread nationwide to hire “navigators” to help them understand premiums, deductibles, etc. The worst problem is that those making too much to afford Medicaid-driven subsidies probably will not be able to afford insurance, thus back to the old ER. The navigators – with little training – are not supposed to push any plan, so laughs are in order. So far, the application process is a total mess.

Remember the well-publicized lady in Detroit (now being given $300 million borrowed from China by Obama) screaming about the free healthcare in 2010, with money furnished by Obama. She’s finding out now that there’s no free lunch. Kaiser Family of California furnishes some details. The policy mentioned above for a family of four and income of $50,000 carries a premium of $5070 per year ($422.50 monthly) with a possible (not guaranteed) government subsidy of $1705. But no benefits are available until the $2,550-deductible is satisfied.

People will likely not know what’s covered until they see a doctor and might receive a rude awakening. The labor unions, having negotiated beautiful healthcare plans with employers (especially the auto workers) discovered that their members are among the losers, made a trip to the White House to get the expected exemption, and left in a huff. They carried the water for the prez in 2012 after he earlier had saved jobs at GM and Chrysler, leading both to bankruptcy, with shareholders holding the bag. He’s not running again so…guess what!

The housing-bubble-bust-up occurred when people were told to buy houses whether or not they could afford them, with millions of defaults the result. An insurance-bubble is about to take place as people are told to buy insurance they can’t afford without incurring humongous deductibles. This is called bait-and-switch, the mother’s milk of government.

No argument here with healthcare being available for all but there’s also no free lunch! Elected Washington officials are very well paid (actually inordinately overpaid) and thus are out of touch with the hoi polloi. Senators and representatives receive $174,000 in salary and can earn in addition 15% of the level II executive rate, another $26,955 for a total of nearly $201,000 per year. The House Speaker makes $223,500 and the majority and minority leaders in both houses make $193,400. They also get great medical insurance and pension perks and have exempted themselves from Obamacare, which would cost them more than they would like to pay.

Obamacare hurts the most disadvantaged, who already suffer. Nothing has been more deplorable, however, than the president’s unilateral exemption of the business community (his friends) from the law until 2015 (after 2014 elections, then probably exempted again). As per the Constitution in personally nullifying settled law, Obama overreached and admitted the law is bad. Impeachment, anyone?

And so it goes.
Jim Clark