Islam, ISIS & the Mahdi

The atrocities being committed by ISIS forces, primarily the butchering and/or beheading of Christians, besides being the “way” of jihad, probably has another more important purpose, to wit, making nations angry enough to wage war beginning in the Middle East but spreading throughout the world. Much has been made of the ISIS-announced objective—inculcation of the final world-ruling caliphate—but it may go deeper than that.

According to the brand of Shi'ite theology championed by former Iranian president Ahmadinejad, there has to be a worldwide conflagration in order for the final result to be enjoined...absolutely necessary as the Muslim bad guy known as the Dajjal takes up the fight, is victorious with his followers, and hands the world over to the Twelfth Imam, also known as the Mahdi, who will dispatch the Dajjal and rule for an infinitely long time, during which the infidels called dhimmis will either convert or be taxed (enslaved) or killed, with all Jews given no choice but killed.

This concept was hijacked by Mohammad from the scriptural allusions to Anti-Christ a few hundred years after the canonization of the Bible and a few more hundred years after the original manuscripts were produced. The great battle to be waged and won by the Dajjal is the equivalent of the scriptural Armageddon, with the Mahdi as the replacement of Jesus Christ, scriptural ruler for a thousand years of peace at the end of Armageddon, with Christ disposing of Anti-Christ and the his henchman, the False Prophet.

Dajjal will be a one-eyed man with a horrible scar on his forehead and a blind eye appearing as a swollen globule. He will arise more or less on his own, probably claim to be the Mahdi, raise his army and make war. The nearest thing to Dajjal currently is Mullah Omar, head of the Taliban, who was blinded in one eye and received a tremendous head scar in the Soviet-Afghanistan war of the 1980s. Omar has also been designated as the “Commander of the Faithful,” the first such in a thousand years, or the second caliph, or “Amirul Mu’mineen,” presumably the top Muslim in the world. Problem: Omar is a Sunni.

Ahmadinejad has already prepared the “throne” for the Mahdi, the Jamkaran mosque on the outskirts of Qom, a virtual Shi'ite holy city some 92 miles south of Tehran. The government set aside $120 million to upgrade it in 2005. What he desperately needs in order to bring on the Dajjal is, of course, a candidate for the job, and a setting in which the great conflagration can take place. He understands that the earliest Muslim operator (hopefully himself) to bring on the final destruction will get the prize not of being Dajjal but of fulfilling his destiny as the enabler and therefore in line presumably to be the Mahdi's top dog in the glorious reign. Problem: Ahmadinejad is Shi'ite.

The thing Shi'ites have going for them at present in the interest of fomenting the needed conflagration to bring on the Mahdi is the widespread Muslim chaos throughout the Middle East and Near-East North African countries. As the peoples rise up against their governments they kill each other but also vent their spleens upon the West and provide the atmosphere collectively conducive for attempting to wipe out Israel, the object of their greatest hate and the entity Iran (Ayatollah Khameini) has sworn to “erase.” Such an action could plunge the entire world into war.

Presently, Iran is the greatest Shi'ite fomenter of terrorism in the world, with its Sunni counterpart being ISIS. As Iranian Shi'ites have joined the Iraqi Shi'ites—actually taking over the Iraqi army—in liberating Tikrit, it has declared its own war against the ISIS Sunnis, who have taken over much of Iraq and northern Syria. Iran is already fighting Sunni Saudi Arabia in Yemen by proxy, with the Saudis siding with Sunni Egypt in an inevitable showdown with both Iran and ISIS.

So the stage is set for the Mahdi. Add to this the fact that the only way to stop Iran from getting the bomb—never mind the president's deal—is destruction of everything connected to the project, just as the Israelis destroyed Saddam's nuclear facility in 1981 on the day before it was to go on line. This would mean more violence leading to war.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

USA & ISIS

There's a certain sadness connected to the recent flaps concerning the RFRA laws enacted in Indiana and Arkansas. It has little or nothing to do with an alleged mistreatment of homosexuals, who though attempting be some sort of “protected species,” are just people whose freedom has not and will not be threatened by people of faith who choose not to participate in activity that violates their Christian beliefs. The homosexuality is not the issue. One can't tell by looking who is and is not homosexual, so entrepreneurs do business with homosexuals routinely and would even if a capital “H” were sewn on the homosexual's lapel.

The problem rises only with respect to homosexual symbols and same-sex marriage, not even, for the most part, with same-sex unions, which are recognized routinely by being awarded the same perks, both governmental and private, as traditional and legal marriage-unions. To participate in constructing homosexual symbols, such as in printing clothing, or in same-sex marriage activities, such as producing a he-and-he wedding cake, is to the Christian a violation of scripture and consequent belief-system.

In ISIS in the Middle East, a person rejects his Christianity and conforms to Islam or loses his head at the hands of Muslims but not Muslim governments. In the U.S., a person rejects his Christianity and conforms to the homosexual mandate or loses in court or in business by fiat/actions not of homosexuals but of government. In both cases, the injured actually had no rights, the former because of private operators but the latter because of the U.S. government favoring one segment of society over another.

The problem is exacerbated by involving the freedom of religion as a practicing matter and the prohibition of the freedom of religion as a practicing matter. This is a First Amendment matter disallowing the government to establish or recognize religion but also disallowing the government to prohibit the exercise of religion. The RFRA is designed to address the latter, i.e., to guarantee that homosexuals not be favored at the price of denying believers their freedom through government intervention.

The government is involved only if there's a COMPELLING interest. There are many establishments willing to print most anything on a T-shirt so there's no compelling interest for the government to lean on the one business that because of religious beliefs refuses to do that. There are many bakeries that will construct any kind of wedding cake and many photographers who crave any kind of business so there's no compelling interest unless perhaps there's only one baker or one photographer in town for same-sex people to approach. Even then, prohibiting the exercise of faith is questionable at best since no actual harm occurs if there's no wedding cake or pictures or flowers or whatever.

Would it be too much to ask same-sexers to make some extra effort to satisfy their desires? How long does it take to phone a few establishments or preachers and find precisely what's needed? Not long, of course...so why all the disruption? There can be only one answer, to wit, a premeditated plan to hurt somebody or some business.

In Lexington, Ky., in 2012, an LGBTQ group was denied T-shirt monogramming service by a business for religious reasons. At no extra cost, the printing was done by another provider but the homosexuals, though suffering no harm, made the usual noises/actions just because they could. The “Hobby Lobby” Supreme Court decision settled the matter but not until 2014 and not until the business had to hire lawyers for both a commission action and court action, though it was not bankrupted through loss of business and paying expensive legal counsel, the obvious intent of the LGBTQ gang, which, of course, had nothing to lose and doubtlessly had fun in the bargain. Free legal services abound for the LGBTQ folks.

The saddest aspect of the whole business is seen in the fact that the government's imprimatur is on same-sex marriage, anathema to not only scriptures and Christians but to Nature itself, a perverse violation biologically and mentally of the human body/mind. It bespeaks a society rotting from the inside out, just as did ancient Greece and Rome.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Indiana RFRA

Lately, it has become a “fun thing,” not to mention potentially profitable, for homosexuals whose application for services is turned down by folks who consider such services a violation of their faith to bring lawsuits, either for money or spite or both. The best result, it seems, is to run the accused out of business. The highest profile such case in Lexington, Ky., had to do with a sweater-engraving business refusing to accommodate the local LGBTQ crowd. It's still in business after a court ruling in its favor.

I surfed over to the ABC Sunday morning show of 29 March in time to see ABC biggie George Stephanopoulos, former chief gofer for the Clintons, haranguing Indiana Governor Mike Pence over the law he had just signed disallowing an abridgment of religious freedom when business-people are attacked by the LGBTQ crowd for not conforming to their demands whether they like it or not. Little George kept using the term “discrimination,” the favorite of the ultra-liberals for tarnishing people. The governor did a good job of burying Little George, who was obviously in a fit of pique, just short of a temper tantrum.

Discrimination is a two-edged sword, of course. The governor had the high ground in that to abridge the alleged freedom of the Stephanopoulos crowd was to abridge the religious freedom of—discriminate against—people of faith. The U.S. Constitution guarantees against this, stating unequivocally in the first amendment that the state cannot prohibit the free exercise of religion, which is what the LGBTQ crowd demands, unless, of course, a religious action threatens public safety, which is not an issue in this matter.

The Supreme Court ruled (Hobby Lobby, June 2014) that people of faith can refuse actions violating their beliefs, obviously absent a public safety issue. This also exonerated Hands On Originals in Lexington, Ky., from liability locally in June 2012 for refusing to prepare clothing engraved with symbols violating its beliefs. The U.S. Court of Appeals, 6th Circuit, ruled in 2009 that a Kentucky Baptist children’s home, Sunrise Children’s Services, did not violate state or federal laws when it dismissed an employee engaging in homosexual conduct.

The homosexuals/lesbians/transgenders/whatever have attempted to make their position the same as that of racial minorities, a “protected group,” an obviously silly approach. They are just people who claim an aberrant lifestyle, sort of like alcoholics, who do not comprise a “protected” species. No business can be made to employ an alcoholic so why should a business be made to hire a homosexual? No apartment-owner can be made to rent to an alcoholic so why should he be made to rent to a homosexual who, he suspects, will contaminate his property with lewd and filthy homosexual practices such as anal sex?

Anyone can claim to be homosexual while racial ethnics, ipso facto, are recognizably what they claim to be but all of them are just people. The Constitution guarantees their civil rights but it especially guards their religious rights, which government cannot infringe upon, the substance of the Indiana law. Religious rights trump civil rights vis-a-vis Constitutional protection unless public safety is an issue.

If homosexuals had no other recourse for services, they might have a case. For instance, if only one doctor was available in a town he would be compelled (a compelling government issue concerning welfare) to treat everyone. This is not the case in this country. The sweater issue mentioned above was easily handled since at no extra cost the sweaters were produced by another supplier.

On April 28, 1967, boxing champion Muhammad Ali refused to be inducted into the U.S. Army, citing religious reasons. Born Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr., in 1942, he changed his name to Muhammad Ali in 1964 after converting to Islam. He was also convicted of draft evasion but was later cleared by the Supreme Court. In other words, someone else had to take Ali's place and possibly go to Vietnam and possibly be killed there. Who suffered the discrimination? The Indiana case is no different. Ali had the right to tell the federal government NO for religious reasons, just as folks whose beliefs are violated by enhancing homosexuality have the right to say NO to homosexuals.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

PALM SUNDAY 1865

Lee

At Appomattox, Palm Sunday,
He donned his best but not to pray,
Oh no…respects he had to pay
To one who fought him all the way
From Pennsylvania to the bay,
From Appalachia, grim and gray,
To Sherman’s march, that grim foray…
To Appomattox…Palm Sunday.

His army, starving, poorly shod,
Had put its thousands under sod,
But even now made prayer to God
To bless them as they still would plod;
For some, they knew why they were there,
For others, mostly unaware,
For others, still, just on a dare,
For all of them, they were nowhere.

The battle had been lost a while,
Surrender, though, was not his style,
Was there in him some profound guile
That led men to this final mile?
Perhaps he knew, perhaps knew not…
He surely saw the total rot
That on the South had stamped a blot
Of misery – its sorry lot.

Ignominy – surrendered sword –
Was something generals abhorred…
But then his men could ill afford
Alternatives that were untoward;
Therefore, a flag of truce was flown
And carried to where it was shown
By aides who would not him disown,
Who would yet die when charge was blown.

And so he mounted up and rode
To where his enemy bestrode
The land which once he had bestrode
To plead that mercy be bestowed,
And mercy was allowed full sway,
And fittingly on Palm Sunday
As symbolized in just the way
Christ promised life on Easter Day.

Grant

It was a strange and mournful time, at best,
For those who were the victims of conquest,
But as he took his rest this Palm Sunday,
He led the victor…not to church to pray…
Oh no, he led an army poised to prey
Upon a hapless foe in disarray
For want of sustenance and ammo, arms,
Reduced to foraging the friendly farms.

A failure at most everything he tried,
He nonetheless successfully had vied
With generals whose minds were sharp as swords –
Their armies killed each other by the hordes;
He was unkempt this hallowed day in camp,
Mud-splattered in late winter’s cold and damp,
At Appomattox, though, there was but gall,
He meant to kill the foe for once and all.

And then the rider came with flag of truce,
Already he had messaged to induce
Surrender of his foe to save their men
From useless death – Palm Sunday’s sad amen;
For four long years, the bloody war he waged,
To see it end with no more fights engaged
Was almost more than any man could hope –
No matter, though, he knew that he could cope.

Ignominy – surrendered sword abhorred –
A thing that generals could ill afford,
He wondered if his foe was far too vain
To give it up, no matter all the slain,
He wondered, too, if he could do the same,
Admitted sometimes war a daring game
Where winners did not take it to the bank
And losers lost their lives or lost their rank.

And so he mounted up that Palm Sunday
And rode to hear his enemy’s parlay,
He knew his president’s discomfiture
With vengeance that a soldier must endure –
His own mindset and also honor-bound…
He thought of all his men now in the ground,
Refused the sword his enemy now bore…
Showed mercy, sent them home for war no more.

Palm Sunday

It was Palm Sunday – sixty-five…
No battle yet upon that morn
For army yearning to survive
Beneath a burden long since borne;
Four years of bloodshed till this day
At Appamattox – war now lost –
A beaten army – disarray,
And all for nothing…with great cost.

And on that day in blood inured
The other army camped nearby
With victory all but secured,
Prepared again to fight and die
But held the hope that finally
Some common sense would enter in
And that no battle would it see –
The smell of death…putrid as sin.

It was a clear day, springtime warm,
When churches reenact Christ’s ride
Upon an ass, where foes would swarm,
Where crucifixion would betide;
At Appamattox two men rode
Fine horses to their meeting-place—
Opposing armies they bestrode
But met to end this war’s disgrace.

And so surrender was complete,
Commanders putting peace in place,
The guns all stacked in rows quite neat
But years of dying not erase;
The soldiers leaving – soon or late –
Might make it home by Sunday next,
Christ’s resurrection celebrate
And put their battles in context.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Pernicious Professorial Pontificating

University of Kentucky professor emeritus John Stempel in an op-ed in the Lexington Herald-Leader of 20 March vented his spleen on the 47 senators who sent the letter to Iranian Ayatollah Khameini to the effect that any deal promulgated by the Obama administration could be nullified with a stroke of the pen after the next election, explaining that under the U.S. Constitution presidents may not make deals, secret or otherwise, on their own, even though Obama has assumed that monarchical position domestically with respect to a number of things such as constantly changing—violating—Obamacare on the basis of politics alone.

Stempel said, “This unprecedented break with prudent practice has created a furor that places the U.S. government in a difficult position... .” UNPRECEDENTED? Either Stempel is uninformed or he's just pushing the usual democrat boilerplate, probably the latter. Coincidentally, in a recent issue of the Weekly Standard, Stephen Hayes pointed out a number of examples that give the lie to Stempel's assertion. One of the most notable involved then-senators Kerry and Harkin and a group of House democrats led by majority leader Jim Wright (later the speaker who was forced to resign account numerous personal perfidies) who wrote—yep, a letter—to Nicaraguan communist dictator Daniel Ortega in April 1985 to at least feign undercutting President Reagan. Remember Iran-Contra?

This is what Wright and his House conspirators wrote: “We regret the fact that better relations do not exist between the United States and your country. We have been, and remain, opposed to U.S. support for military action directed against the people or government of Nicaragua. We want to commend you and your government for taking steps to open up the political process in your country.” Did/does anyone believe Reagan ever had any intention of invading Nicaragua? I'm still laughing. The congressmen perpetrated a publicity stunt in 1985, while the 47 senators meant business in their letter to the world's head-butcher.

As a follow-up on Wright's letter, Kerry and Harkin traveled to Nicaragua for a tete-a-tete with Ortega, Kerry identifying themselves as Vietnam vets “alarmed that the Reagan administration is repeating the mistakes we made in Vietnam.” He didn't mention that democrat President Johnson was the perpetrator of the alleged Vietnam mistakes or that he (Kerry) while still a Naval officer traveled to Paris around 1970 to “parley” with both North and South Vietnamese pooh-bahs in behalf of peace, trying to undercut President Nixon. The Vietnamese historians are probably still laughing about that.

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

Hayes noted that in 2007 House Speaker Pelosi went to Syria for a tete-a-tete with dictator Bashar Assad at the same time Bush 43 was seeking to isolate Assad account his support for Iraqis who were killing American GIs. The administration had asked her to forgo the trip but she went and seemed to be quite taken with Assad, announcing later that he was eager to be a constructive player and wanted peace with Israel. She was trying to undercut Bush and one wonders if Stempel thinks what she did was UNPRECEDENTED.

Even curiouser is the Obama-Kerry effort concerning Iran currently. Obama said this in his Iranian New Year speech: “Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Khameini has issued a fatwa against the development of nuclear weapons [ending it], and President Rouhani has said that Iran would never develop a nuclear weapon.” At the same time, State Secretary Kerry is making some sort of deal with Iranian representatives that will stop them from doing what Obama said the ayatollah said they weren't doing, in the first place. Go figure. Someone's either lying or totally ignorant. Would that be “UNPRECEDENTED?” Stempel knows.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Presbyterians & Perversion

The foolishness of political correctness, with its primary emphasis placed on diversity (whatever that actually means), has done considerable damage to the society, leading to loony-tunes social engineering in everything from the military to other government agencies/bureaus to sports to education to crime. It virtually nullifies both freedom of speech and just plain common sense.

For instance, murder is a crime. In 45 states it's just a crime or a (gasp) hate-crime but what difference does that make? The victim is dead either way, political correctness notwithstanding and with motive (if it can actually be determined) not a factor. The n-word can be used by blacks whether in jest or in rage but not by whites even in jest because for them it, ipso facto, connotes hate. This is not to say the n-word should ever be used; rather, to show how silly the emphasis on diversity is.

Diversity is a noun connoting the differences among people, so it's a divisive element that provokes antipathies and animosities. Yet, it has captured the society to the point that people are wary of saying or doing anything lest they be accused of racism, hate, discrimination, prejudice, superiority or anything anyone else cares to signify as politically incorrect. This flies in the face of nature because words like diversity don't change people. They are who/what they are.

Perhaps the saddest takeover of a culture by political correctness is occurring vis-a-vis religion. This has mainly to do with the so-called mainline denominations. The so-called evangelical groups and at least to some extent the Catholic Church have not yet succumbed, though the pressure of political-correctness advocates in their ranks is always operative.

When a religious group buys-in to PC it actually “buys-out” to the scriptures, liturgies, creeds, statements of faith and operations. PC becomes the new religion. The latest-mentioned denomination to bow out of the faith and into PC is the Presbyterian Church (USA), the largest Presbyterian group in the country, with 1.8 million members and some 10,000 congregations. PCUSA has just sanctioned same-sex marriage and given permission for same-sex weddings to be conducted in every congregation.

This is political-correctness carried to the nth degree since scripture as well as tradition, not to mention common sense, absolutely condemn this aberration. It represents the final casket-nail for the denomination, which has been drying on the vine for years anyway, as the “social gospel” has become a substitute for the biblical gospel, which, while emphasizing the doing of good works, condemns forthrightly and often the filthiness connected to homosexual behavior, as well as other unacceptable behaviors such as adultery, fornication, lying, murder and stealing.

In 2011, the PCUSA authorized ordination of homosexuals, so exiting the denomination during 2011-13 were 428 churches (nearly 5%) that do not worship PC. In 2013, the membership was still at 2.7 million, so one-third of the membership since then was lost primarily over the buildup to this same-sex decision concerning marriage. The handwriting had been on the wall for a number of years. In 1960, the membership stood at 4.1 million in a vibrant denomination. Since then, the church has lost 56% of its membership (33% in just the last two years) while the U.S. population has grown by 75%.

Gene Robinson, a practicing homosexual, was the Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire 2003-13, though he had been married at one time and had two children. He and his “partner,” also known as the husband of their sordid “marriage” (civil union in 2008), are now “divorced,” as if they were ever actually married. The Episcopal Church (another “mainline” denomination) lost 41% of its membership 1960-2013. Churches that succumb to PC dry up on the vine as they become more like social clubs.

By contrast, the largest evangelical denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention (about 16 million members), gained in membership 1960-2013 by 65% though it lost about a million members between 2007 and 2013 and is now sort of plateaued. This says much about religion and the twenty-first century, to wit, that the nation is impacted less and less by the religious community as it becomes more attuned to political correctness instead of the scriptures.

The “main-liners” have just about completely surrendered to PC, while all denominations are held in much less respect today than probably ever before in this country, which was founded primarily by people holding faith in God and surrender to scriptures as key to both fulfillment spiritually and success materially and militarily. It's sad to watch evil win over rectitude, especially religiously, a deplorable commentary on the nation's mores.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Military Social Engineering a BUST

Given President Obama's latest military brainchild, to wit, that the time has come for women to join the crack Navy Seals teams, I was surprised at the segment on the CBS Sixty Minutes program on 15 March having to do with the initial 86-day training-period required of Marine lieutenants who aspire to be qualified as Infantry Lieutenants. CBS is a virtual propaganda arm of the president, as are both NBC and ABC, and would hardly be expected to air something as obviously adverse to the president's decision-making and/or his actual understanding of anything military other than how to get on and off Air Force One.

David Martin was the main CBS reporter in the segment and was allowed to see just some – actually very little – of what the aspirants have to endure in order to continue. In the group of Marine lieutenants beginning the ordeal were five women, one of whom allowed herself to be interviewed and filmed during part of the first day, which involves a grueling combination of exercises featuring everything from actual bare-knuckled fights among the aspirants themselves to an obstacle course to a grueling 16-mile hike carrying extremely heavy equipment. The first day is designed to make or break as far as effort is concerned, while others may fall out along the way. None of the five women made it past the first day.

By day 70, there were 59 Marines left out of the 85 that began the three months of torture designed to tax to the limit both the physical and the mental capacities of the aspirants, no quarter given to either gender. On this day, the aspirants began cliff-climbing and -descending in the Mojave Desert...temperature 110 degrees. The packs they carried weighed 115 lbs, and there were no paths or directions. It was every man for himself and it was not a one-day affair. The general in charge of the training mentioned that the packs in some situations weight up to 130 lbs.

Martin interviewed the candidate who was at the top of the class at that point, asking his weight. The young man, who stood 6-2, weighed 170 lbs. and had begun the course at a weight of 200 lbs. Losing 30 pounds in 70 days has much to say about what's involved in becoming an infantry officer, and he still had two weeks to go. The general explained that in fighting conditions the enlisted men had to have faith in their leader, thus the rigorous training and weeding out of less worthy men, not on the basis of desire or mentality but on the basis of leadership skills and strength honed by the most demanding training possible.

There is also an infantry course for enlisted personnel, though nowhere near as demanding as that of the officers. One-third of the women who try make it through this course. Martin interviewed one of the women who passed this course but her remarks were surprising. She said, even though she completed the training, that the infantry was not the place for women. Two of her reasons were that the weight that had to be carried was too heavy (women might have been allowed the rope-climb without packs, but I'm not certain) and that women's hips were not built for that strenuous requirement, translated as the idea of unisex being loony-tunes.

The Navy Seal training is even more comprehensive and demanding than that of the infantry officers not least because much of it is in and below water and involves precision parachuting over all kinds of seas or terrain. No mention was made of these things vis-a-vis the Marine Infantry Officer training, done on the land.

Field officers made known unmistakably their unease with the admittance of practicing homosexuals into the military when Obama instigated that foolishness and doubtless are as distressed with yet another effort to weaken the entire military establishment with respect to actual combat. The inevitable result of attempting to combine men and women militarily was proven years ago just in boot camps, namely, the gradual easing of rigorous training eventuating in a soft cadre of fighting men. This arrangement was stopped.

Social engineering usually destroys everything it touches. So far, the Marines are holding out and, hopefully, will continue to actually train men to break things and kill people until the ruinous Obama presidency is history.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Freedom of SPEECH at OU?

Fox News liberal analyst Juan Williams surprised me the other day when he said about the recent Oklahoma University SAE Frat scandal that OU president Boren had made a mistake in summarily throwing the fraternity off the campus and ordering the SAE residence vacated immediately, forcing all the students to get all their stuff out and find somewhere else to live. Apparently, Boren took that action over a nine-minute video showing SAE members singing a song he considered offensive to African Americans. The song was offensive and even included the n-word.

It was predictable from the start that legal action was in the offing, especially since the parents of fraternity members are usually well-heeled and often can wield a very big stick without having to walk softly. Williams was right, not because the video was not offensive but because the guys who sang the song had the right of freedom of speech just as the rappers, probably 99% black, have the right to call very publicly for the murder of white cops and the rape of any female available. And this is just some of their milder stuff.

Apparently, Boren made the sad mistake of acting impulsively without thinking things through and without enough actionable information to warrant doing anything. This is the same mistake Obama and Holder made with regard to the Ferguson matter last summer and the Trayvon Martin thing in Sanford, Florida, a while back. It's the same mistake Obama made in 2009 when without any information he said the police in Cambridge, Massachusetts, acted stupidly. He was dead wrong.

I saw on CNN on 13 March a press conference held by an attorney (represented Timothy McVeigh in 1995) who has been engaged by the local SAE organization at OU. He, of course, mentioned the obvious, that no sort of hearing was held to get the facts straight. For instance, the bus on which the video was made was only one of five in the entourage furnishing transportation connected to the event in question. Should Boren have made the effort to see just who and/or how many people were involved in the offensive behavior?

It was reported that two students had been expelled. The attorney indicated that both students withdrew before Boren got into the matter. It was reported that other actions might be taken by the university, meaning Boren, of course, who served as both governor of Oklahoma in the 70s and as a U.S. senator 1979-94. He should have known better than to act summarily and by now probably has discovered that certain hoops have to be negotiated before action as drastic as his can be undertaken.

Remember the Lacrosse Affair at Duke University in 2006. Three players were accused by an African American woman of rape at a party in which she was hired as a stripper...admittedly, nothing pretty about that. For some strange reason, the team's inordinately successful coach, Mike Pressler, was forced to resign even though he had just been given a new 3-year contract and graduated 100% of his players over 16 years.

The rest of the season was suspended, a large faculty-group was up in arms and the university assumed that the players were guilty. The president of Duke acted just as Boren did, though maybe he wouldn't have if the affair had concerned the basketball team. The players were innocent. The woman had plenty of DNA proof but not from the guys charged or, apparently, any other Duke lacrosse player. It would be fun just to go through the lawsuit material in that fiasco, something Boren might be facing.

Freedom of speech is just that—freedom to speak, or sing. Political correctness freaks scream for something chargeable and called “hate speech,” which is just what anyone says it is...in this case, Boren. If a black group or a rapper had sung something about whiteys in connection with the f-word, they might have been admonished to be nice, certainly not suspended or thrown off the campus. That's the way political correctness works, and Boren would probably agree...at this point.

The 9-second ditty was offensive but so were both Obama (Jimmy Kimmel show) and Holder in their agreement that the Ferguson protests (protesters) were justified. Protesters burned down part of Ferguson twice and two white police officers have been shot. For them and Obama and Holder that's freedom of speech—burn and shoot—and all their disclaimers contrariwise amount to naught.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Selma/Ferguson/Obama

The president's speech at Selma was inspiring and well delivered. He covered all the usual points of reference such as historical events, the Bible and the poet. He also mentioned the hot-button issues (a number of mentions of Ferguson) that have to do with race, just as he has throughout his six years in office, along with Attorney General Holder, who famously said recently that Americans are too cowardly to talk about race.

Americans are not too cowardly to talk about race...they are simply sick and tired of both talking about and hearing constantly about race. There's racism in the country. “Okay! We get that,” is the response of the average white guy, who knows that racism is here to stay no matter how much it's discussed. Since Selma and all the civil rights legislation of the 60s, it's been drummed into the minds of especially young blacks that they are the victims and will always be the victims of racism.

Race was the theme of Obama's autobiography of 1995, Dreams from My Father, and has remained his focus throughout his career, even though he, barely out of diapers at the time of Selma, is the prime example that racism does not drive the society, governmental or otherwise. The black community responded so negatively to all the legislation, with results being relatively inconsequential, that, absent admitting the obvious reason for so-called inequality, it screams racism.

Ferguson is the prime example. Whites make up only 29% of Ferguson's population, meaning that black voters outnumber whites far more than two-to-one, yet the mayor and five of six City Council members are white, as are 50 of the 53 policemen. This situation could be completely turned around in just ONE election cycle, with blacks taking over the town lock-stock-and-barrel and making whites so miserable that they would have to sell out and leave.

Nor does it make much sense to talk about inordinate black arrest numbers or mistreatment received. Sixty-seven percent of the population is black, so it would be expected that such an overpowering black-to-white ratio vis-a-vis lawbreaking would be expected. Until he gained further information about Brown's just committed theft, Officer Wilson merely asked Michael Brown to walk on the sidewalk instead of in the middle of a busy street.

He didn't pull a gun and threaten Brown and his friend. He merely asked them to do something both lawful and sensible, as well as reasonable concerning the drivers who had to swerve in order to miss hitting them, possible especially since Brown was high on marijuana and could conceivably wobble all over the place. Even Holder admitted that Wilson was guilty of no crime in the killing, and the grand jury deliberations, not the usual case, were published on the Internet or printed in their entirety to evince total transparency.

There's no question that prejudice—even hate—existed on the part of some Ferguson policemen. A couple have resigned. This is true in any police force in any town of any size throughout the nation and is not confined to just white officers. Holder didn't mention the number, if any, of black applicants for the police force or what, if any, disposition was made of those applications. Whose fault is it that a mere 6% of the police force is black while 67% of the population is black?

The president would have been well-served not to mention Ferguson, where no crime was committed except the crimes by blacks burning down much of the town TWICE, thus running people out of business TWICE. The report months-long in the making by Holder's DOJ excoriating the police did not include excoriating blacks who, bent on some strange notion of revenge instead of justice, burned their own. It would be interesting to know how many have been brought to justice.

In Obama's inner circle as well documented is the highest profile black crook, Al Sharpton, who has made an industry out of violent protests in order to eradicate racism. He's worth $5 million and owes the government $4 million in unpaid taxes but is a White House guest never bothered by Eric Holder or the IRS, which the administration has used to its political advantage in abusing white organizations. This is the message the president sends to young blacks...and it stinks.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Academia 2015

In Academia two-o-one-five
The most important thing to thrive and jive
Is basketball or football one-o-one,
The most sought-for degree – game to be won;
The “student” athlete is B-M-O-C,
For him attending class a novelty,
Since he flies to and fro across the land
For weeks in transit to some new grandstand.

The coach is now a multimillionaire,
The profs – with luck – afford some underwear,
The “student” athlete is okay to play
If he can spell his name the same each day;
Next to the coach, the A-D's deal is best,
His bonuses alone he can invest
In hedge-funds run by cronies all well-heeled...
The president envies and is...gasp...thrilled.

Assistant coaches struggle mightily
–Six-hundred-thou a puny salary–
But, after all, on some days there is rain
So on the practice-field must risk a sprain;
Assistant profs pay rent but get a lift
Moonlighting, flipping burgers on night-shift,
The renovated stadia can now
Accommodate more fat cats—sports cash-cow.

Yeah...education is the best deal found
When TV-folks spread billions all around,
The straight-A students work the fast-food store
While scholarships abound for any score
Above D-minus for one who runs fast
Or puts a quarterback in six-week cast –
Corruption is the campus-game throughout,
Take that right to the bank and never doubt.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

KERA's Curse – School-based Councils

In the largest pork-barrel legislation in the state's history at the time, the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA) of 1991 was the worst assault imaginable on two generations vis-a-vis their primary and secondary education possibilities, although the gradual disintegration of nearly all the act has lessened the effect in more recent years. The legislature is now in the process, at least hopefully, of dissolving the worst aspect of KERA, the school-based council consisting of the principle, two parents and three teachers. These councils rendered the elected school-boards virtually powerless.

These councils have had a stranglehold on the process, completely controlling curriculum, textbooks, and personnel, even to the hiring of their own principles. The state Supreme Court made it plain years ago that superintendents cannot overrule these councils in something as important as the hiring of a principle, ergo, just about everything else as well. The process has meant that grade-school students enter middle schools without any collective background and that middle-schoolers enter high schools the same way. The predictable result was the downward spiral of achievement across the board. Standardization has its place.

Additional KERA requirements: (1) Grades 1-3 combined; (2) Some reasonable method of testing; (3) Monetary awards to teachers, administrators and schools for simply doing their jobs; (4) Youth Service Centers; (5) Family Resource Centers; (6) Regional Service Centers. Busing (social engineering) had been such a colossal failure by 1991 that it played no part, thankfully, in KERA.

So, what happened? (1) Teachers simply ignored this foolishness and it was legislated out eventually. Strangely, part of KERA required that no more than two grades be mixed in grades 4-6, when by that time the 1-3 lunacy would have condemned the 4-6 gang even worse. (2) The worst messes imaginable accrued to testing, with tens of thousands paid to various private groups that were probably less able to perform than the locals. Some tests were even lost in the mail, not that it mattered a whit. One could read or listen to the media accounts and just laugh at the ineptness and waste.

Number (3) comprised a fiasco of enormous proportions. Predictably, some schools and staff were never to be eligible just because of the demographics so teachers and administrators did the necessary—they cheated on scores or whatever else and took the money. A $34 million trust fund was set up to assure the rewards. Students were bribed, even excused from school for doing their very best on tests which they were told meant nothing to their grades. They were even taken to amusements parks. The students didn't care about doing well on the tests since there was no grade-reward. This was stopped not long after it was begun but it reflected the mindset of the legislator—throw money at every problem.

There may have been some sense to (4) if it included actual tutoring. The major effect of (5) was probably that it provided baby-sitting (pre- and post-school-hours) for parents, although there may have been some social benefits. (6) The eight regional service centers were discontinued in July 2003, with the reason given that there was not enough money to support them. That reason was laughable since they were supposed to save the worst schools, obviously no matter the cost.

The system was called “outcomes-based education” and the major emphasis, unbelievably, was on enhancing self-esteem. More unbelievably, there was even serious consideration given to there being no winners/losers in sports, lest someone be offended. Because so many teachers retired when it was passed, KERA was dubbed the Kentucky Education Retirement Act or something like that. Harlan Representative Roger Noe sort of shepherded the bill through the legislature, if memory serves, and, ironically, was not returned to the legislature in 1993 after having served since the late 70s.

In an in interview with Eric Moyen (University of Kentucky) in March 2004, Noe, a college professor then and now, seemed to have second thoughts about KERA, or at least some of it, and expressed doubt that the legislature should ever enact pedagogy. He said he thought more of the old traditional philosophy and mentioned John Dewey, claiming “those folks may have been what we needed to stay with.” He was right. The solons were in way over their heads...but the pork can guarantee a legislative career...except for Noe, apparently.

And so it goes
Jim Clark

School Transgender Nonsense

There seems no limit to the triviality connected to legislative sessions in Kentucky. The Senate Education Committee has just passed by 8-1 a bill for vote that simply requires public school students to use the toilets and locker-rooms designated for them based on their obvious gender. One wonders how this subject could even come up, much less be taken seriously.

The big thing in political correctness currently is the “transgender issue.” Should a student who has all the attributes of a male be allowed to use the girls' facilities if he announces that he is actually a female dressed as a male? Likewise, the female student who claims transgender-status using the boys' locker-room after a hard day's practice in football or volleyball, respectively.

The main claim of the transgenders has to do with bullying, although such would never occur normally if they just went about their business and said nothing about their gender hangup. Classmates don't know them by their psychological structure but as other-sex only if they're immature (or dumb) enough to announce to one and all that they're “different.” This is probably what has happened.

One would think a sensible parent or other appropriate person would take care of this matter by simply telling the youngster that the world doesn't revolve around him/her, and that 99.99% of female students should not be exposed to a guy doing his thing (such exposure means jail time legally), and vice versa for the girls, just so he/she can prove something, namely that school administrators are mentally-challenged enough to even bother with this problem.

The lone negative Senate vote was cast by Lexington's Senator Reginald Thomas, who said such a law “will stigmatize transgender students.” Just the opposite is true. A boy entering the girls' facilities automatically stigmatizes himself. A girl entering the boys' facility might suffer the stigma attached to just “wanting some,” especially after hours.

Exactly how does a principle determine the truth when a guy with male features and dressed as a male announces himself as transgender and therefore entitled to feminine privileges? Surely just his word is not good enough. Absent a clinical determination (if there is such a thing), the boy is a boy. Even if he shows up in feminine attire he's still masculine, all the artificial processes to make him look girlish (transvestite-mode) notwithstanding.

The same is true with respect to girls. Is a girl's word all that's necessary for special gender-treatment, the privilege of showering with the boys after a phys. ed. class? Or, should she just be told to disrobe before the lady teachers in order to prove her masculinity or lack thereof? Thomas's sense of stigmatization is about as warped as it gets.

Thomas may not have thought of a more serious problem connected with gender-reversal as related to the rest rooms and other gender-related issues, such as eligibility for sports teams. Picture the girl in the boys locker-room shower after a football practice when one of the guys suggests to the other guys having some fun with her, all of them high on Gatorade, with the adrenalin still coursing through their hormones. No one is thinking of consequences (sophomores thinking ahead not likely), so there could be hell to pay all around.

In this era of political correctness, think what would happen if a girl claims to be a boy and presents herself to the football coach. Or, think of the boy who presents himself to the girls' volleyball coach and tries to un-embarrassingly wear the little hot-pants gear designed for voyeurism as much as for any athletic reason.

The financial cost of building new rest/locker-rooms is obvious, not to mention the stigma attached to those who must use unisex facilities, although the transgender-claimers might just be seeking notoriety for the everyday attention and enjoy being watched. Sexual perversions of one kind or another are big right now in the world of political correctness and being thought “different” can be very attractive to an immature student. Is it any wonder that ISIS uses Twitter to recruit teenagers on the basis of be-headings, stoning, amputations, etc.?

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

LAMEDUCK

At the midpoint of Black History Month and especially during the exact celebration of President's Day, President Obama spent a bachelor golfing-weekend in California, landing back in Washington on Air Force One in a snowstorm on the evening of 16 February. At the same time, virtually the eastern half of the nation was undergoing some of the most threatening weather in a long time, with thousands if not millions losing utilities and facing subzero temperatures. Boston, for instance, is trying to dig out from some nine feet of accumulated snow.

Just as the case with the executive orders unconstitutionally governing immigration, this move was an in-your-face gesture to the body politic. The president is so severely lame-duck currently that he seems to have decided to ride it out until January 2017 by having a good time flying AF-1 all over the country to make speeches simply to make speeches and play golf.

Perhaps he's recognized finally that he's relatively irrelevant, a president with no policies concerning much of anything except his pet project—immigration amnesty of one kind or another and an occasional cheap shot at policemen, something never done, of course, in his hometown of Chicago, where life in gangland is worth about what it is in ISIS-land. The nation is not with him as he flounders in Islam-protection mode, though he makes solemn pronouncements occasionally regarding the gratuitous genocide taking place in Syria, Iraq and—now—Libya by monsters operating in the name of ALLAH, with the Koran and ayatollahs calling the shots.

He may not have recognized that his legacy is going down in flames before it even has a chance at ignition. The Libyan-ISIS connection has just beheaded 21 Christians on the shores of the Mediterranean not far from Benghazi, Obama's chosen place about which to tell perhaps his biggest LIE, aided and abetted by his then state secretary, who may have the audacity to try for his job. These tragic murders would not have happened but for Obama's decision—with no congressional consultation/participation—to attack Libya in 2011 as his contribution to the ISLAMIC-inspired Arab Spring, which resulted in the utter devastation of Libya, now being rapidly taken over by ISIS.

This is the centerpiece of the Obama legacy...the murder of both a nation and much of its population. His legacy will not be Obamacare. His legacy will consist of decisions so wrong as to defy comprehension, especially as commander-in-chief, a constitutional office he has besmirched even as he consistently reminds the great unwashed that he speaks and the world jumps...except that it doesn't. He has introduced the non-American concept of “leading from behind,” thus making him and the office a laughingstock worldwide.

His misjudgment a year ago of ISIS (that “jay-vee” outfit) will appear in the history books as a glaring and damning event of immense proportions. Most folks do not expect him to put an army on the ground in the Middle East—and he shouldn't—to fight hopeless losing-wars for people too weak or cowardly to protect themselves. But folks do expect him to tell it like it is, to wit, that Islam is a curse upon the world and that—one way or another—its jihad operatives, governments in some cases, must be eliminated. Until he puts the arm (sanctions and weapons, for instance) on the governments of Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran, and even Algeria and Morocco (troop-strength of 130,000 and 195,800, respectively, to add to the more-than-a-million troop-strength of the others, not to mention hundreds of planes and other weapons), this cancer on the world will metastasize.

Leading from behind will not get this done. Muslims will have to fight Muslims until the Muslims of ISIS are totally neutralized. The president is overseeing a diminishing of U.S. military capability at the very time he should be enhancing it in a world possibly as dangerous as that of the 1930s-40s, when nazi Germany, fascist Italy and imperial Japan decided to conquer free nations and then fight each other to the death to rule the world. Jordan and Egypt have joined the battle but only after the latest atrocities, the immolation of a Jordanian pilot and the beheading of the Coptic Christians.

To his credit, Obama is not willing to sacrifice blood and treasure for losing causes but he must step up and lead in the fight against ISIS, which has announced and is fulfilling its plan to savage Christians and set up a worldwide caliphate on bloody Sharia Law. It's the Crusades all over again and Western Civilization must NOT lose. The Saracens are at the gates of Europe in force (especially Italy now) and in sleeper cells everywhere.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

High Horse Tallyho!

Dear President Obama:

There are bunglers in the operation I head, the Institute for Modifying All Governmental Entities, known familiarly as IMAGE, so I feel your pain when inferiors must be disciplined, dismissed, even water-boarded occasionally, though I appreciate your good judgment in being discreet about that. The rumor that you have threatened Axelrod account the assertion in his book that you lied about same-sex marriage in 2008 is, I'm sure, unfounded, since you said in 2012 what you said in Illinois in 1996, to wit, that same-sexing should have its whoopee made legal.

My effort herein is to suggest that you consider heading an arm of IMAGE upon your retirement from the presidency in 2017, assuming you avoid impeachment and conviction by those squirrelly republicans or, heaven forbid, being caught in a crossfire in Chicago or on the practice-green among jealous golfers with handicaps higher than yours. Your recent prayer-breakfast speech—a work of teleprompting that even God must envy—has triggered the need for a new IMAGE agency to be called the Headquarters for Instituting Gregarious Humorous Hegemony Over Relatively Senseless Erudition, to be labeled inevitably by the talk-show lunatics by its acronym HIGH HORSE, though this title is merely coincidental and has nothing to do with that part of your God-informing homily (He may not have noticed) regarding the location of the disreputable proletariat.

HIGH HORSE will develop strategies for avoiding too much seriousness about any subject, such as ISIS decapitations, starving Kurds or date-rape. These things call for consideration, of course, but have existed ever since people evolved from snail darters—little joke there to prove my point that a bit of levity is always in order, else the whole population suffer PTSD of one kind or another. Fox News listeners will be taught through HIGH HORSE, for instance, that the so-called political analysts (mostly lady lawyers in miniskirts) are in the tradition of Jon Stewart...fun and games masquerading as intellect and news...as should be the case.

In the planning as a part of HIGH HORSE is an agency labeled the Societal Laboratory for Acknowledging Vicious Enslavement amidst Righteous Yammering or SLAVERY, for short. You made it clear at the prayer breakfast that folks in the U.S. carried on slavery in the name of Christ, implying that perverse pontificating by preachers sanctified the practice. It will be the business of SLAVERY to put the clerics (especially evangelicals) on notice (especially in Mississippi) that they are racist, bigoted, discriminatory, disingenuous and therefore guilty of verbal hate crimes, with AG Holder on their case. Just as the president has determined that the term “terrorist” be replaced by “man-caused-disaster,” he is signing an executive order that the term “hell” be replaced by “la-la-land” and anyone continuing to mention hell will be prosecuted.

Within SLAVERY is planned the Council on Heretical Rhetoric Invoking Sanctimonious Torpor, or CHRIST, for short. The Rev. Dr. Presidential-Adviser Resident-Tax-Cheat Protest-Organizer/Looter-in-Chief Al Sharpton is being considered for this job since he's a theological heavyweight and can reinterpret the scriptures to indicate that God wants his followers to do absolutely nothing religious, evangelical, prosyletizing or spiritual since to do so causes excitement, especially among the Tea Party gang, which it is rumored will soon organize tee-ins at golf courses, thus embarrassing the president. Sharpton has already prepared a manual entitled “Theological Torpor,” which will also contain a chapter on the glories of same-sex marriage, thus encouraging heresy among the great unwashed Bible-thumpers.

Finally, there will be a sister-agency under your direction as an extra enticement called the Constitutional Reordering of Ugly Sanctions Against Diversity Excellence, or CRUSADE, for short. This working group under your direction will devise ways to essentially neutralize the Bill of Rights, a favorite subject of yours. For instance, you can work to prove that freedom of religion means that Muslims cannot be frisked for suicide vests and that European Christians who fought Saladin were warmongers, not Christ-followers and should have worshiped Allah, with Muhammad as his prophet.

As you often say on your way via Air Force One to the golf course du jour, there's more work to be done. Once out of office, you will have it made in running HIGH HORSE and CRUSADE.

Best regards,
I.M. Otherself, CEO
IMAGE

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Subterfuge as Sanctuary

Much has been made of the fact lately that NBC news anchor Brian Williams has been guilty of lying in some of his “reports,” though news-anchor reports are always suspect since they seem to be done on a quick trip somewhere to show up in whatever wardrobe fits the circumstance, climate, etc., and confer with the reporter on the spot, perhaps even giving greater credibility to whatever is said/shown just by his/her august presence. Such was the case back in 2003 when Williams reported from Iraq that the helicopter he was riding had been shot down.

Williams lied. The helicopter blessed with his presence landed safely. Williams made a weak apology the other day and allowed that he'd step down for a while. That was sort of a lie, too, since it happens that NBC has actually suspended him without pay for six months, as if six months will magically restore his credibility. According to CELEBRITY NETWORK, Williams “earns” $13 million annually so he's coughing up $6.5 million for a lesson too late for the learning. CN claims his net worth at $40 million, so don't shed any crocodile tears. Unfortunately, some subsequent fact-checking has produced other Williams shady shenanigans, so NBC may suggest another line of work for him.

If anything, NBC is guiltier than Williams since employees ranging from those who just carried Williams's luggage to his producers to the camera-people to the head honchos at the system knew about this stuff and just sat on it. This reminds of the “Dan Rather Subterfuge” back in 2004 when he and CBS tried to ride out the storm occasioned by Rather's bogus documents claiming military dereliction by George Bush. Finally, some folks were fired but Rather got to stay on until he sort of disintegrated and disappeared.

The consensus is that NBC as well as CBS, ABC, CNN and MSNBC are shills for the Democrat Party in general and Barack Hussein Obama in particular. This is interesting in considering the positions Obama has taken on same-sex marriage. His campaign honcho, David Axelrod, has just published a book in which he notes that Obama lied in 2008 when he said marriage was a man-woman thing, not same-sex. Obama was very emphatic. In 2012, Obama claimed he had “evolved” to the point (evolution is such an exact science) of understanding that marriage between homosexuals was quite normal.

Whoa...in 1996 when he was running for the Illinois State Senate, he said he favored legalizing same-sex marriages and would fight efforts to prohibit them—strong stuff. So, is there a serial liar in the White House in the Williams tradition, a sort of extension of NBC on governmental steroids? The president said he knew nothing about “Fast & Furious” or the IRS manhandling of the Tea Party and insisted that a 13-minute YouTube film caused the “Benghazi Massacre.” These were momentous affairs that could not have escaped his attention...thus the LIE. He even cited the Benghazi lie in a speech to the United Nations two weeks after disgorging the initial lie in the Rose Garden while on his way to a fund-raiser in Hollywood.

Okay...there are liars in both political parties, maybe ALL political parties. But democrats seem to have a natural—even compulsive—talent for it, especially when the stakes are high. The consensus is that Hillary Clinton will be the presidential nominee in 2016, though she has been very quiet for the last six months or so. That's just as well since she told an even bigger lie than Williams, Rather or Obama when she claimed in 2008 that she had undergone sniper-fire in Bosnia in 1996 and had to run for it, with Chelsea at her side, as if the army would have let the then first lady and first daughter anywhere near sniper-land. She and Chelsea simply walked across the tarmac at an airport and were greeted by a pretty girl-sniper holding a bouquet.

Williams, Obama and Clinton all told lies that—surely to their knowledge—could be easily exposed just by the cameras and mikes that recorded what actually was the truth. Or...could it be that they were actually ignorant of that fact? Or...could it be that they were/are so cynical that they figured it didn't matter, sort of like they could walk on water and the great unwashed could just suck it up? Shades of NBC and CBS—just like Rather—that's probably the answer.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Obama & the CRUSADES

This is what President Obama said in his speech at the Prayer Breakfast in Washington the other day: “And lest we get on our high horse and think this [prostituting religion, presumably] is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was [sic] justified in the name of Christ.”

There's no argument with the fact that people since the beginning and for whatever reason have committed atrocities sometimes too horrific to imagine. There is an argument, however, when any historical event(s) is referenced but judged outside its proper context. This is what the president did. The Crusades (officially, more or less, between 1098 and 1291) represented contests for territory more than for religious reasons in that the Muslim thrust, perhaps beginning with the conquest by Muslims of Jerusalem in 638, had to do with subjecting whole populations and their territories. This would be akin to the Baptists attempting to take over Catholic New Orleans...a land-grab.

Muhammad (530-632) was a caravan-raider and also participated in tribal warfare. In 610, he declared receiving revelations from Allah through the angel Gabriel (apparently co-opted from Holy Scripture), began preaching to his own tribe and claimed his position to be that of prophet. His “brethren” in Mecca would have none of it and he was forced to make his headquarters in Medina in 622, from where he and his followers remained solvent by raiding caravans, with horrible violence part of the action, not to mention vindictiveness against the “brethren.” Not long after, Jerusalem fell, thus the contention established between the followers of God of the Bible and the followers of Muhammad.

The Islamic movement headed west throughout North Africa and even into Spain (Muslims called Moors), an actual invasion of Europe, in 711. The Moors ruled Spain until they were defeated in 1492 at Granada by the Católicos (Catholics). In the meantime, Muslim forces contested with Christian (actually mostly Catholic) forces back and forth as Muslims (remember the great Saladin) tried to take over Europe, with the Crusades organized to push back. The battles didn't stop in 1291 but continued for centuries into the 1600s...Ukraine, Vienna, Poland, for instance. The Muslim effort was always to establish the worldwide Caliphate, the announced goal of ISIS today.

The battles were actually wars no different from wars today, for territory. It happened that they pitted Muslims against Christians, each faction claiming divine ordination from Allah (actually Muhammad) and God of the Bible, respectively. So, Crusaders fought in the name of Christ, something for which everyone in Europe and the U.S. should be proud and grateful. Imagine Sharia Law in all statehouses, courthouses and in Washington, especially as applied to women.

The president's allusion to slavery and Jim Crow as being justified in the name of Christ comprised a cheap shot. There may have been some zealots back in the day who approved and/or preached that contemptible position but there was never any movement—at least to my knowledge—which had as its focus God of the Bible ordaining slavery. The entire world economy almost from the beginning of the human race was built upon slavery, the strongest subjecting the weakest. Scripture-writers dealt with it as a fact of life ordained by morally challenged people and even included rules dedicated to the treatment of slaves, but the practice was conducted in the name of homo sapiens.

The president made a feeble attempt to tiptoe around what everyone in the room knew to be a curse on the world—militant Muslims conducting jihad, the actual proponents of slavery as exercised against the infidel. It's called Dhimmitude. Officials of Islam, as must all Muslims, admit that according to the Koran the infidel is to be killed, pay a tax or become a slave. This is sort of understandable because Obama's entire childhood was Muslim-oriented. Using a prayer breakfast to further divide people into camps, however, by trying to get them to “understand” what is beyond comprehension, to wit, more than a billion Muslims worldwide failing to neutralize murderers claiming divine impetus for genocide—often torturous beyond belief—was disingenuous, dishonest, totally out of place.

Of course, it could be that the president is ignorant of the history. That's even worse.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

ISIS & the U.S.

Muslims make up 7.5% of the population of France. That might not sound like a lot but if that percentage were applied to the U.S. there would be some 24,000,000 Muslims in this country, roughly equal to the entire populations of the adjacent states of Illinois and Indiana. Currently, there are about 6,700,000 Muslims in the U.S., or 2.1% of the total population. Though largely concentrated in a handful of states, they live throughout the country and their mosques, having expanded in number by around 75% in the last 13-15 years, now number more than 2,100.

Though it's politically incorrect to say anything about Islam since it's alleged to be a religion, one has to take notice of the possible number of “sleeper cells” in a population of about 1.5 million households, with four members as the average makeup. In the obviously expanding number of such households will be an increase in the number of mosques, some of which have already been quietly infiltrated by agencies such as the FBI because planning for terrorism-activity has been proven to take place in these supposed places of prayer and worship.

The recent “Charlie Hebdo & Deli Massacres” in Paris perhaps form just the tip of the iceberg in the total amount of problems created by Muslims in France, in which by 2030, according to a recent TIME article, Muslims will make up 10.3% of the population. This will happen while the birth-rate of the French-Europeans falls below sustainability. A similar situation exists in Austria, Belgium and Sweden but by a significant degree throughout Europe, thus increasing the number of sleeper cells, the small groups of mostly young Muslims, many if not most born in European countries (homegrown), who have been or are being taught how to make weapons of mass destruction (bombs) and in some cases brainwashed into considering homicide-suicide missions.

The claim is often made, especially by elected officials like Senators McCain and Graham, that ISIS must be defeated on the ground in Syria/Iraq in order to militate against these sleeper cells; however, the word is out in the ISIS entity now that would-be jihad fighters traveling to the Middle East are being encouraged to stay home and do their mischief there. Training for ground-battle prepares no one for sleeper-cell activity since these cell-members will never openly fight anyone in this country, not even the police. They can learn from manuals and even the Internet how to make bombs, strap them on and trigger them, whether suicidally or by remote-control.

ISIS does need to be thoroughly defeated on the ground because its goal is the conquering and enslaving of the people in the Middle East and northern Africa and eventually the world. The countries in the area know this—Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iran, Turkey, each having a border with Syria/Iraq. Currently, 90% of the aerial activity to defeat ISIS is said to be carried out by the U.S., not these countries, in either drone or fighter action. This should not be the case, and President Obama is right in insisting that no significant number of U.S. troops should be on the ground anywhere over there.

Saudi troop-strength stands at 233,500 boots that can be on the ground in Iraq in a matter of hours. The Saudi capital, Riyadh, is only some 300 miles from the Iraqi border and ISIS strength is said to number only about 40,000 fighters, giving the new king an advantage of about 7-to-one. The king also has 1,095 tanks; 7,202 armored fighting vehicles; multiple rocket-launch systems and 652 military aircraft, 229 of which are deadly, modern jet-fighters secured from the U.S. and Europe. Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Jordan and Iran, which have troops numbering respectively, 233,500; 510,600; 100,500; and 523,000...for a total of 1,367,600 boots can put them on the ground immediately to stop evil ISIS. This doesn't even count Iraq, which this year is supposed to have 271,400 boots of its own minus the deserters and defectors.

ISIS is a greater threat to these countries (all that oil) than to the U.S., and it's the elephant in their collective living-room. In a matter of days, they could drive ISIS into oblivion, with or without the U.S. It's time for the Shi'ites and Sunnis to bury the hatchet, clean out ISIS and then fight each other if so inclined. Meanwhile, law enforcement agencies in the U.S. can do their job, as they have been doing anyway, in discovering and neutralizing the sleeper-cell crowd.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

TIME & the Glass Ceiling

In the 09 February issue of TIME, editor Nancy Gibbs discussed the lack of women “at the top” (only 5% of Fortune CEOs) but also mentioned that 75% of women polled by REAL SIMPLE indicated no interest in their boss's job, preferring “happiness and a sense of purpose”—neither preference defined by Gibbs—over “fame or money.” TIME writer Rana Foroohar, in an article about the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, wrote that a proven solution for boosting economic growth was putting more women to work but lamented only 17% female participation at Davos. Could she be missing something?

More women- than men-students populate university campuses and are increasingly entering medical and legal professions. Soon if not already, most justice/court-systems will be run by women. Girls outperform boys scholastically K-12 as do females in college except perhaps in math. According to the Association of American Medical Colleges (November 2013), 31.9% of physicians are women. According to the American bar Association (July 2014), 34% of practicing attorneys are women, both figures representing enormous expansion in the last 40 years and climbing rapidly.

Foroohar suggested that the government—presumably on all levels—should subsidize child-care, thus freeing women to do their thing and climb the ladder, greatly increasing their income but necessitating political action, something she opined in short supply. In his $4 trillion budget plan, Obama has just included subsidized child-care and mandated birth-leave, mostly by soaking the rich. He said he wanted to replace “mindless austerity”—something the bankrupted Greeks seem about to try, with—“smart investments.” His attempt, predictably, is the socialist model...government even raising the children.

According to the Wall Street Journal (05 February 2014), 69.3% of women worked outside the home while the other 30.7% weren't even looking for work. Is Foroohar missing something here, too? She sells women short. While surely acknowledging the intellectual superiority of women, she insists on a certain victim-hood for them as if with all their smarts they can't get it together. Is income inequality (whatever that is) the fault of intellectually inferior men, who subject women to low wages just because they can?

The women's movement has always insisted upon unisex as norm, an obvious insanity but politically correct, notwithstanding that it equals women with men in every aspect up to and including physical strength but non-unisex-wise embodying the claim that men are not as smart as women. Yet, victim-hood is the scream. In both 2012 and 2013, the Pentagon reported that there were, coincidentally, exactly 26,000 unreported rapes in the military. The figure for 2014 will probably be the same since anything unreported can be...well, anything. But women military types are supposed to handle assault because they're taught how to protect themselves, even when falling-down drunk. Get the picture?

Victim-hood is claimed by brilliant college coeds vis-a-vis rape. College administrations hem and haw when they should be banning coed dorms and enforcing strict “rules of engagement” among equals. Coeds have carried stupidity (hormones over brains) to a new level by getting drunk, drugged and hanging out at bars and frat houses, all avoidable circumstances, then screaming rape. A tipsy University of Kentucky freshman coed allowed a tipsy guy in her dorm-room in January 2013 and something happened. She said rape, got the kit, the whole nine yards. According to him (no witnesses, of course): “He said, she said.” He went free, she committed suicide.

Finally—to get down and dirty chauvinistic—women often sell themselves as shallow, literally. A program on Fox News is called “Outnumbered,” a guy dressed to the nines on a couch with five women, knees forward and no coffee-table between viewer (voyeur) and group. The off-the-shoulder deep cleavage along with the high-thigh and never-uncrossed legs by the women told the story. The guy was there to talk. The ladies, steeped in leftover adolescence, seemed hellbent on showing everything they had. Taking them seriously was a laugh. The same is true in the serious news-programs. The picture accompanying Foroohar's piece included a picture of four CEO-type men—suit and tie—and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg— deep cleavage and bare thigh-to-foot—in the same pose...made her look silly and even disrespectful.

Lesson: Reality trumps whining and facts beat fantasy.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Lest We Forget

Auschwitz

I hovered over trains and tracks each day
And watched as shipments came without delay,
The box-cars crammed with flesh and detritus,
The living and the dead bathed in their pus.
Storm troopers strutted, whips so quick to wield,
Their courage proved not on the battlefield,
But as they scourged and laughed with ridicule,
Defenseless masses died beneath their rule.

I watched as families were torn apart,
The children and the aged condemned to start
Their journeys to the gas striped by the lash,
Their bodies then cremated into ash.
The older, stronger ones with arms tattooed
Were listed just as numbers – garish, crude,
And herded toward the work-camps all around
Or into labs, with screams the only sound.

Throughout the deadly compounds rose the stench
As flames from charring bones the flesh would wrench
And then consume the whole in fiery glow
As martinets yet strutted to and fro.
Throughout the work-camps also rose the stench
As work from filthy bodies life would wrench,
The weaker ones went soon beneath the whip,
The road to charnel house their final trip.

I watched starvation take its daily toll –
It was a tool to gain complete control,
The martinets would laugh and lash in glee,
But starving ones came quietly to me.
The ones marked out like guinea pigs or mice
For every sadist’s fancy – volt or slice,
Throughout a threefold hell ere they could die
Like bugs were smashed…their ash then filled the sky.

Ten-thousands met their fate just through disease
While martinets kept strutting in their ease…
No doctors, medicines, no treatment there,
Regaining health was less than even rare.
Through fevered nights, they wept their bitter tears,
Warehoused in stacks like boxes tiers on tiers,
Emaciated bodies broken, bare,
Were sanitized in flames…then filled the air.

Oh yes…I had been there at Anzio,
Throughout the South Pacific…at Iwo,
I gathered in those places friend with foe,
Saw battle-hardened troops their mettle show.
They came to me – to Death – I gathered them,
They came blood-soaked and spewing bloody phlegm,
They came with honor, fighting for a cause,
They faced me, fears in check, without a pause.

But Auschwitz…what an evil travesty
On what Almighty God had meant to be
A thing of beauty…yes…and called mankind
But seen in martinets so ill-defined!
At Auschwitz they became an evil force,
Satanic animals…sadistic…coarse,
Who sent their victims, shorn of dignity,
So inhumanely…yes…they cursed to me.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

The EDUCATION Racket

Ripoffs of taxpayers are routine in Kentucky in every government department, both local and state. They're possible because legislative bodies and/or other entities such as school boards are empowered to tax citizens, who often don't notice how they're manipulated. Recent shenanigans in every entity from the airport board to those outfits ostensibly serving towns and counties (Bluegrass District something or other, for instance) have been egregious, especially, in granting inflated salaries for the anglers who can work the systems.

Public education systems are ripe for ripoff. Case in point: State Auditor Edelen found long ago that the administration of the Lexington/Fayette County School System had so messed-up its finance-arrangement that the school-board was forced to hire someone to straighten it out. Firing the perpetrators of the mess might have been appropriate but that didn't happen. Kyna Koch was hired months ago as a consultant to help do the job.

Alas...the system is in such a mess that it hasn't been fixed, so Ms. Koch will be paid $10,000 a month through June to get this done. Predictably—Ms. Koch, apparently no longer just a “consultant,” has been given a title for her new “temporary” job: Administrative Services Senior Director. Nice work if you can get it...but a sharp MBA grad at UK or certified CPA could probably straighten out the mess in a month for a song. The job hasn't been advertised for perhaps less cost, but so what!

Only in education Kentucky-style could such an important official have as a task (probably her main task), as reported in the Lexington Herald-Leader of 30 January, helping two employees to make the “financial picture really sound.” Really? Edelen described the relationship between the budget director and the finance director as “toxic,” so Koch's job is to get them to at least speak and okay the official spreadsheet. Egad! What happens if the toxicity remains? Firing either of them would be impossible, lawsuits being routine, with the school-board losing every time.

Education often equals greed and graft. The law concerning the president of the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education: “The president shall be compensated on a basis in excess of the base salary of any president of a Kentucky public university. The council shall set the salary of the president, which shall be exempt from state employee salary limitations as set forth in KRS 64.640.” The CPE administrator's credentials (or lack) matter not a whit vis-a-vis salary.

University of Kentucky President Capilouto's base salary, perhaps the highest and last adjusted in September 2014, is $535,000 plus $150,000 in bonuses, so CPE President King must be paid more than $535,000 or more than $685,000, depending upon the whim of the CPE council. Whether the housing and automobiles and country club memberships are also counted could apply. Who knows? The Fayette County School superintendent is worth at least a quarter-million per year, while teachers average around $50,326 (2013). The point: Administrators are grossly overpaid, though not to the extent of assistant football/basketball coaches at UK, who make better than half-a-mil annually and with perks probably approach $600,000—in the name of education.

Jay Box, newly installed president of KCTCS (community colleges) should gripe because he's being paid less than his predecessor, who was the highest paid community-college president in the whole nation. Box will make only $345,000, while his predecessor made $328,326, plus a $78,000 bonus, a $90,000 housing allowance (okay, rent is high these days), and a $43,000 car allowance...total: $539,326. In addition, Box's predecessor, Michael McCall, will make another $328,326 as president emeritus in 2015 for doing nothing...almost $27,400 a month, more than many folks make in a year of actual work. Should Box sue?

After just 18 months on the job, UK Provost Christine Riordan resigned effective 31 December 2014 to take another position far from Kentucky. Predictably, she is being paid $35,000 a month in absentia by the taxpayers through June (maybe longer) ostensibly to finish important work that no one else at UK is smart enough to handle. She will be an “executive adviser.” Get the point?

Education is the right racket for gaming the system. Eight education service-centers were part of the Kentucky Education Reform Act of 1990 (pork-barrel records set), with some 8 or 9 top professionals at each site, if memory serves, making top salaries to help local systems escape pedagogical nihilism. Very costly, they didn't work and were finally rescinded, but were examples of education-waste on a grand scale. It's called system-salary-sucking.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark