Corrupter-in-Chief

The epitome of jackassery was reached the other day when President Barack Hussein Obama looked down from the podium during yet another of his dull speeches and smirked at the president of Kenya as he lectured him on the need to glorify homosexuality, as he has done in the U.S, for the practice of which behavior-wise a participant is granted 14 years in the hoosegow in Kenya. It is also a crime in over 30 African nations, third-world populations that have not as yet entered, as Obama and the U.S. have, the 21st century.

To add further insult as the premier Ugly-American, he stared at the Kenyan president and lectured him as to the evils and consequences of corruption. Though he never lets slide an opportunity to remind everyone that he is the commander-in-chief, he didn't recognize in that act of stupidity his own broadly corrupt approach to matters in the U.S., such as the persecution of people with whom he doesn't agree by using the IRS to put them out of business. Or, what about the humongous lie he told even the survivors, personally, regarding what caused the Benghazi Massacre? He is indeed the Corrupter-in- Chief, those acts perfidious in the extreme.

Or, what about the equally humongous lie he told the American public regarding the healthcare law he got passed through the architecture of MIT's Gruber—generator of the BIG LIE and originator of the term for lying as “grubering?” Then, there was the time that he and fellow thugs Senator Durbin and Senator Reid attempted to deny the Senate-seat he vacated to the man constitutionally mandated both Federally and state-wise to receive it. The three disgraceful elected officials, hypocrites without equals and lawless to the nth degree, were unsuccessful but never bothered to apologize, at least to my knowledge.

Obama's hangup with Kenya (he claimed to be Kenyan-American) is that 83% of its citizens claim to be Christians, while the prez, as shown lately with his obeisance to Ramadan, has made every effort to see that the evils of Islam must never be mentioned as such, even when Muslim terrorists acting—as they always do quite publicly in behalf of Allah—burn, torture, behead and otherwise violate innocent and vulnerable people all over the world; this, though homosexuals are absolutely condemned even in Islam, the tradition to which he was born but urged Kenya to accept as normal. Disgusting!

He had a great time ridiculing the Kenyan president in front of his relatives, referring to himself as the first Kenyan-American president to visit Kenya. One can only be glad that he didn't refer to himself as the first Kansan-American president, which would have been appropriate since his mother was born and raised in Kansas, but, of course, she was white and he always references himself as African-American, black, disrespecting his own mother and, more especially, his white grandmother, who raised him and whom he labeled as the “typical white person,” a derogatory pronouncement, as he meant it to be.

When Obama, bypassing Congress and both the U.S. Constitution and the War Powers Act, ordered decent American military operatives to bomb the bejesus out of Libyans for seven months, murdering no one has ever said how many, he should have been impeached in 2011, as he should have been concerning the huge LIES he has told throughout his terms.

Indeed, he is the Corrupter-in-Chief.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Trash-Mouth Is Coach's Dear Friend

The big sports-news in the Lexington Herald-Leader of 23 July was that the rapper Drake has been ordered by the University of Kentucky to stop publicizing a picture he made with a UK athlete apparently during the October 2014 basketball “Midnight Madness” activity celebrating the university's concept of God, called Basketball. The publicity is a minor infraction of NCAA rules. UK basketball coach John Calipari, according to the article, called Drake a dear friend who would be welcome to visit any time. This is a line from one of Drake's latest “songs” called “Energy:” They tryna take the wave from a nigga/Fuckin' with the kid and pray for your nigga. That's real class.

The “madness” event is also celebrated on a number of university campuses, is covered by TV, and involves making icons of basketball players. This effort, like the ones preceding it each year, trivialized the sport and sorta made monkeys out of those who perpetrated and attended it. Assuming the final okay for this coronation of campus royalty came from University of Kentucky Athletic Director Mitch Barnhart, one wonders if he needs to step up to the next level of maturity.

The UK affair cost $300,000, roughly equivalent to a year's tuition and fees for 31 actual students. The basketball players are predominantly part of the minor leagues for the NBA and expect to be gone after one year of non-study unless they aren't judged high draft-picks as freshmen, in which case they stay for a second year of non-study...maybe even a third. Their career as UK players, as often noted by Coach Calipari, is a one-shot stab at greatness, thus not an academic endeavor.

The big draw last year was trash-mouth-rapper Drake. Strangely, Rap is usually described as music. It's actually a recitation set to an accompaniment of percussion instruments, mostly drums, that might accompany a dance with grunts, groans and screams in deepest Africa engaged in just before some sort of tribal bloodletting or par-boiling of a missionary. Back in the day, it would have been a celebration when one tribe sold the men of a defeated tribe to the slave-traders.

Drake couldn't do his act in the Madness venue, even though the young people there were familiar with his lyrics/performances and were misled into believing he would regurgitate his thing. Otherwise, he wouldn't have been the main-liner. A look at some of his stuff is instructive for sound, fury and “poetry.” Drake's buzz-words are fuckin', nigga, bitch and shit. His masterpiece called “The Catch Up” features two “fuckin' niggas” caught up in a—you guessed it—gun-fight.

In his classic called “The Motto,” he raps about the fuckin' man, the bitch, the real nigga and shit. This is his phrase in Motto: “almost drowned in her pussy so I swam to her butt.” Another: “I tongue-kiss her other tongue.” Get it? In his classic tune “Light Up,” he uses the term “mother-fucker.” This usage is as sacred to gangsta-rap as Christ's mother Mary is to Christianity. Here's a line: “Wait until the sun goes down and we gon' make this bitch light up.” His conclusion: “fuck niggas, bitches, too, all I got is money, this'll do.”

Contextually, one has to remember that the women's basketball team and women cheerleaders are/were part of Midnight Madness. In Drake's parlance the “ho,” rap-term for whore, is mentioned, and these UK women were exposed to Drake, who sees them not as human beings but objects to use, abuse, discard. Was Drake's background even cursorily examined by Barnhart, Calipari, and—oh yes—Matthew Mitchell, the women's coach? Sad fact: it probably was and considered a real turn-on for today's sophisticated adolescents and 20-somethings. Maybe the headliner for 2015 will be Miley Cyrus appearing nude to “twerk” with an assistant coach.

Mitchell added to the denigration of women by cavorting and aping somebody called Bruno Mars. I don't know what he performed but in Mars' classic “When I Was Your Man,” the singer lamented longingly about the fact that his shack-up partner (ho) is gone. In Mars' number “Locked Out of Heaven” (another masterpiece?), is this line: “Your sex takes me to paradise.” Hopefully, Mitchell didn't “writhe” that one.

Mars collaborated on this artistry called “Bubble Butt.” His line was one of the mildest: “Turn around, stick it out, show the world you got...”. From Mars' “Like Tonight,” this gem: “You've got your lips along my body And I'm not gonna stop you...”. What was Matthew thinking? Obviously, he wasn't...or was.

Yeah...Midnight Madness last year was Basketball Bacchanalia since it mainlined orgy as normal and should have been doubly offensive to the men's and women's teams since about the only players who spend many minutes in at least a men's game are African-American. Drake is black and Mars is Puerto Rican/filipino. The lurid background for this stuff (men sex/rape-crazy and women as chattel) insulted all the players. The maturity-arrested spectators got what they deserved – tripe.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Morally in the Tank

The current time-frame in the U.S. might be called the “Southward Era,” as in devolving downward (in jargon only) when applied to U.S. culture, which is becoming cruder and more perverted in enhanced acceleration, its mores being shredded at warp speed. The nation, besides suffering under poor governance, is also experiencing a moral emergency, with the government aiding and abetting – if not causing – this societal decline.

Religion (including religious practices…or malpractices) is also an important matter, as behaviors particularly condemned in scripture are virtually glorified under the rubric of political correctness, even in churches/denominations. While it's a fool's errand to make substantive predictions concerning the end of it all, as some ministers do, one has to wonder just how long the nation – established “under God” – will survive.

The Supreme Court has deliberated and heaved out a ruling that in the Constitution can be found the right for two men to be wed. The Court is made up of three Jews and six Catholics, all from Yale or Harvard concerning education or lunacy (take your pick). Four Catholics voted against this “landmark ruling” – Egad! – with three Jews and two Catholics in favor Constitutionally of homosexuals tying the knot.

These five “enlightened” justices probably never gave a thought to the fact that something as weird as two men getting married, with neither one of them physically prepared to be a mother, ever occurred to the founders. They knew about homosexual behavior, were thoroughly disgusted by it, one presumes, and considered marriage as only between a man and woman. They knew this as both biologically and scripturally mandated, thus pondered within that context as they structured the nation. Undoubtedly, their test for marriage would have turned on whether or not children would be possible.

It's strange that the 14th Amendment regarding abridgment of privileges and immunities should be an argument for disallowing states to define marriage, but not an argument for states or any government defining anything else such as proof of identity for voting or the amount of alcohol necessary for DUI conviction or alcohol-purchasing-age or crime-definitions/penalties, all of which represent abridgments.

It's instructive to note that Justice Kennedy made much of the element of love, fidelity, sacrifice, etc., in writing the ruling, but laws are neither made nor upheld on the basis of emotions, something the founders knew instinctively; otherwise, murder would be okay if a perpetrator found that to be emotionally fulfilling, like Dahmer, for instance. In codifying same-sex marriage, Kennedy degraded marriage (natural family) and trivialized its importance as the basic unit in the societal fabric.

Morally, the nation is in the tank.

Avenged

The measure of a nation can be wrought
By judging its morality, its thought...
One wonders what the measure would be now
If current U.S. judged anent the vow
Of founders for pursuit of happiness,
For life and liberty without duress
From oligarchic nimrods zealously
Perverting what was planned religiously.

The nation stands upon the cusp today
Of floundering about in gross decay
Because of morals slouched in disarray,
Its leadership too stupid, weak to pay
Attention to perversions ill-acclaimed,
Pay homage to the crudeness that defamed
The ancients...then through centuries till now
Brought down empires strong men would disavow.

Five people with collective intellect
Approaching zero could just interject
Into the law that men may marry men
And codify what Nature must condemn,
Their imprimatur on degrading acts
That thinking people know in time exacts
A retribution – Nature's own revenge,
Its plan for stream of life to thus avenge.

Executive an accident in place,
With lack of preparation a disgrace,
Obsessed always incredibly with race,
Speech-making most days firming up his base;
A Congress firmly deadlocked in its greed
Collectively itself thus to succeed,
The population mired incessantly
In something called the great diversity
Which by its own defining schism brings,
Sets groups against each other in all things.

The measure of this nation being wrought
Must be that sadly, surely it is fraught
With social ills that if not quickly healed
Will sicken it until its death is sealed,
And Nature, blasphemed by the populace
That tolerates this wanton, vile disgrace,
Will not be pressed to see itself revenged –
Oh no....just watch and see its plans avenged.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

James M. Dunn (RIP)

The recent death of James M. Dunn, who was head of the Baptist Joint Committee for Public Affairs (familiarly known as BJC) 1981-99, furnishes a reminder of how people can change over the years. This is not said pejoratively since most people DO change as they pass through the different phases of life, myself included.

Dunn was a very effective leader vis-a-vis church-state relationship, arguing consistently and successfully for a solid separation of the two. After leaving the BJC, he became a faculty member of Wake Forest University School of Divinity. He was highly responsible for nullifying any state-mandated prayer in public schools but helped structure the opportunity, nevertheless, for students to pray.

The primary funding of the BJC was provided by the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Baptist denomination in the U.S., until 1991, when SBC leaders, if not the rank-and-file as well, became dissatisfied with Dunn's approaches. From about 1979 until 1991, conservative leaders attempted to make the SBC itself more conservative and were successful, the result being a handful of groups pulling out, the largest probably the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, which does not claim to be an actual denomination most likely because many if not most of its “partner” churches are dually aligned with both the SBC and CBF. It furnishes no membership statistics, as do other denominations, but has a headquarters in Decatur, Georgia. Dunn was a member of the Board of Directors of Baptists Today, a liberal magazine closely connected to the CBF.

Initiated in September 2003 was something called then or shortly after the Clergy Network for National leadership Change. It was a "527" organization, meaning that it was not tax-exempt, actually a PAC. Its head was Albert Pennybacker, a retired minister and former National Council of Churches honcho, and its headquarters was in the nation's capital. Part of its funding was furnished by the George Soros outfit (MoveOn.org), dedicated to the disruption of the U.S.

Sitting on its National Committee was Dunn, also listed as the president of the BJC Endowment. Serving with Dunn, who was also a substantial financial contributor about whose motives one can only conjecture in light of his former stance, was the Rev. Jesse Jackson, protest-gadfly and head of the Rainbow-Push Coalition.

The first paragraph of the CLN Mission Statement: As clergy--pastors, rabbis, imams, and other religious leaders, both men and women--we are deeply concerned about the well being of our country, we are committed to sweeping changes--changes in faltering political leadership and its increasing lack of credibility and rejection of public policies increasingly seen as not only failing but actually destructive of the quality of current life and America's future.

The actors in CLN were not identified as "citizens" concerned about the well-being of the country; rather, they were clearly identified as clergy and other religious leaders, so it would seem that their sole purpose was to tear down the wall that separates state and church (synagogue, mosque) by entering the elective process through religious convictions/actions only, else they would not have identified themselves unmistakably and solely as "religious leaders." So, the CLN was a PAC, pure and simple, dedicated to one purpose, the election of a specific candidate, John Kerry. Dunn had “evolved” into a liberal.

It was significant that in the 1,200-member CLN's National Gathering in Cleveland in May 2004 vice presidential candidate John Edwards (along with Jackson a high-profile adulterer) was a speaker. The CLN defined itself as the "Religious Left" on its Web site, thus identifying itself unmistakably with the Democrat Party, although it's inconceivable that more than a bare majority of its members could have been as far left as John Kerry or Edwards. Or Dunn?

Dunn's evolution continued when he joined Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton in 2008 in something called the New Baptist Covenant (advertised as representing some 30 or so Baptist groups), actually Carter's revenge against the uninvited SBC, whose leaders rejected Carter's theology in 1991, never mind his “devoutness.” Dunn conducted one of the conferences during the clambake, held 30 January – 01 February in Atlanta just as the conventions of the three largest black Baptist denominations were ending (attempting captive black participation) and just prior to the Georgia presidential primary vote on “Tsunami Tuesday.” Nearly half of the speakers were either then or had been connected to politics at the highest level (church-state separation?). Carter was on the record as supporting state-sanctioned civil unions for gay couples. Hillary lost Georgia to Obama, anyway.

The NBC's most profound fiasco was giving Al Gore time and space to present his film An Inconvenient Truth, which could be shown in British public schools only after its many errors (lies) were explained. Its claim of man-made global warming was thoroughly debunked in 2009 by emails of the UN-sponsored perpetrators of the monumental hoax, not realizing that they were leaving themselves to twist in the wind. On the light side, Bill Moyers, an ordained Baptist minister, was to be a featured speaker but was dropped from the program. For decades, he had been a member of a church affiliated with the United Church of Christ, the denomination of Barack Obama and the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah (God damn America) Wright, and which officially sanctioned same-sex marriage in 2005.

Just as Obama “evolved” (his term) almost overnight from insisting marriage only between a man and woman to actually marriage being anything, Carter “evolved” away from the Bible on homosexual behavior and Dunn, after years of yeoman service in behalf of church-state separation, “evolved” away from separation to clergy-sponsored politics and participation in a Hillary Clinton campaign effort (NBC) plus faux climate-alarmist clambake (NBC), whether he believed that stuff or not.

Sad to see the giants fall!

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Stars-and-Bars

In a recent interview with an Atlanta TV station, African-American Andrew Young, former two-time mayor of Atlanta and President Carter's ambassador to the UN, said, “The problems we face don't have anything to do with the flag, the fact is that 93% of the black people killed are killed by other black people. So if black lives matter, let us start believing that we matter.” He also explained that flags mean a lot of things to a lot of people. He understands that white people have as much right to love the stars-and-bars as blacks have to hate it.

Either it isn't taught in school or people forget that slavery was not introduced to this country by white southerners but by the British in the early 1600s, long before the Revolution, Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, made official in 1789. In 1807, the U.S. Congress banned further importation of slaves from anywhere. The South inherited the problem of slavery, upon which its economy depended almost entirely. The slaves were emancipated in 1863, just 74 years after the USA was born.

Nearly the entire Civil War was fought in the South, meaning physical devastation (Sherman's march, for instance) as well as a totally wrecked economy. Nearly 300,000 Confederate soldiers died in the war, as did nearly 365,000 Union soldiers. Together, those deaths comprised 2% of the total population in 1860. Slaves numbered just under 4,000,000 (12%) in a total U.S. population of 31,443,000, but made up only a third of the population in the 15 slave-holding states, meaning that there was a significant number of slaves in the North.

Young knew his history, one presumes, an examination of which indicates that the entire economy of the world was built on slavery virtually from the beginning right into the twentieth century in some places. In fact, it is still a factor in third-world nations, not surprising since the natives procured in Africa by the slave-traders were sold to them by other natives, though this probably is not taught in politically correct schools, either. Indeed, there is much in the Holy Bible dealing with how slaves – an inescapable fact of life way back then – were to be treated.

None of this is an apologetic for slavery, a heinous business. My great-grandfather and two great-uncles are well documented as having fought in the Union Army as volunteers since, being Kentuckians, they could not be drafted. Great-granddad was wounded once and nearly died of disease once and finally drew a pension. All three were born in England and, of course, had never owned a slave.

Although politically incorrect to make the analogy, Jefferson Davis and the seceding states attempted the same thing as George Washington and the seceding thirteen colonies, i.e., declaring independence, with the understanding that they would have to shed blood and treasure in the process. The dead soldiers of the Civil War (including North and South) exceeded by more than 200,00 the number who died in World War II. The Civil War deaths averaged about 340 per day over four years, disease costlier than combat.

Thankfully, Washington and the colonists were successful. Thankfully, Davis and the secessionists were not; otherwise, the world scene would be drastically different today, not to mention a fractured and much weaker Union instead of the marvel the nation is today. Young was indirectly affirming that until black men collectively take their places as heads of households instead of gang-bangers and druggies the situation will worsen.

He probably would also agree that it's time for black youth to spurn the Jesse Jacksons and Al Sharptons, with their insistence on victim-hood, and become producers, not parasites. Unless and until strong black families are once again the norm – as they used to be – there's little hope...and no flag has anything to do with that.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

SCOTUS Makes Mischief

People often object to laws or regulations they don't like by trotting out the Fourteenth Amendment as their apologetic. Fourteenth Amendment: No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The Supreme Court has ruled that same-sex marriage must be honored in every state; however, while most if not all states, as well as the U.S. Congress in the 1990s Defense of Marriage Act, have defined marriage by either statute, the DOM for instance, or state statutes/constitutions, the Constitution does not define marriage so a court – any court – can hardly make a ruling concerning it. Marriage is not like abortion, which is physically/medically defined. SCOTUS made a ruling (Roe vs. Wade) about abortion, accepting its obvious definition.

There are federal laws on the books, however, that deal with marriage not as a definition but as, ipso facto, defined by both tradition and Nature. In 1862, President Lincoln signed the Morrill Act, which made bigamy illegal. In 1882, President Arthur signed the Edmunds Anti-Polygamy Act, which made polygamy illegal. Co-habitation was the target in these cases, at least as a legal matter, but the inference is clear. There were to be no harems in the U.S., an obvious recognition of the fact that people are not animals.

Accruing to the recent SCOTUS ruling, any trio or otherwise multi-number group can now successfully sue any government that disallows any “marriage” arrangement. These groups could be made up of combinations of both gender and number. For instance, three homosexual men could marry four lesbians and part of the lurid whoopee would entail all the legal entitlements accorded to actual families.

This being the case, the Tenth Amendment comes into play, i.e., that states have the right to regulate/define what isn't the responsibility of the federal government. Marriage has never been the responsibility of the Constitution any more than drunkenness has. Each state, for instance, has its own laws defining the alcohol-content amount in a person's body vis-a-vis auto-driving impairment, no matter what any individual thinks.

The federal government (Department of Defense) makes rules regarding who can serve in the military, no matter if a one-armed guy demands to be a Navy Seal or National Guardsman because his rights can't be abridged. The Constitution allows sensible laws on both state and federal levels and most laws abridge somebody's perceived “privileges or immunities.”

Those self-righteous, politically correct citizens, legislators, justices, and bureaucrats who have been gloating over the action of SCOTUS are now facing far more than they bargained for. Laws concerning incest are now subject to being overturned. Brother may marry brother or sister in due time as all the ramifications of the recent action set in. Five people have decided that marriage will become virtually what anyone says it is and that any “personal” individual or group, no matter how lurid its makeup, cannot be denied either marriage or sexual activity by government, no matter how defiled or destructive, especially of children.

The can of worms opened by SCOTUS is even more problematic when all of the Fourteenth is considered, namely the final clause: nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Freedom of religion is guaranteed by the First Amendment, with no governmental abridgments allowed as long as physical harm or disturbing the peace is not a factor. If same-sex marriage is protected by the Constitution that same protection applies to the person who – account religious convictions – chooses not to deal with anything that's same-sex, i.e., not be coerced.

An appeals court has already ruled that a clothing company in Lexington, Ky., cannot be coerced into printing on wearing apparel what it perceives as a statement violating the company-owner's religious convictions. The court has also ruled that a children's-services agency in Kentucky may fire a homosexual for cause and is not required to hire homosexuals or lesbians. The SCOTUS has turned so-called “equal rights” commissions on their ears in this latest ruling.

The Court, not Congress, now makes laws.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

The President & the Eulogy

I tuned in via TV the other day to President Obama's eulogy for Rev. Clementa Pinckney in a Charleston, SC, church and listened for a while to what was a good and predictable effort. When the president turned from eulogizing to politics, especially the politics of racism, I did something else for a while. I listened long enough to realize that he was pushing all the hot buttons pointing to the evil of white people, with whom he is careful never to identify, all the Jim Crow stuff and the implied guilt of current whites who had nothing to do with slavery. Later, I tuned in again right at the end for the “Amazing Grace” finish, a nice touch.

Obama had the congregants on their feet, clapping, giving out the amens, and even brought in the old stars-and-bars for a good shellacking. It was reminiscent of his speech in January 2011 in Tucson, Arizona, at the memorial service for the victims who died in the assault that terribly incapacitated then-Congresswoman Giffords. He had the folks in the aisles clapping and cheering as he turned the sacred service into the kickoff of his second campaign for the presidency.

It was a sort of replay of the circus perpetrated by then-Senator Harkin at the memorial service for Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone in 2002, just days before the election. Wellstone died in a plane crash while campaigning. Harkin approached warp-decibels and near hysteria but Obama did not quite get to that level. Apparently not wasting a crisis, as his former chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel might have put it, he enhanced divisiveness, something he's done throughout his six years...pitting factions against each other. In the process, Pinckney faded into the background.

This may sound harsh until one remembers the Rose Garden presentation the morning after the Benghazi massacre in 2012 in which Obama told perhaps the biggest lie of his presidency, even more damning than his “you can keep your doctor, insurance...” fabrication back in the day or that he knew nothing about Fast-and-Furious and the IRS scandals until he heard about them on the news.

Using the Benghazi lie at the UN a couple weeks later, when everyone in the world knew the truth, was an example of arrogance to the nth degree. He, along with State Secretary Clinton, even lied personally to the survivors of the Benghazi dead when the bodies – all white folks – were returned. One wonders what he told Rev. Pinckney's wife and children as he consoled them.

When two New York policemen (one of Latino-, one of Chinese-extraction) were assassinated a few months ago by a black man, Obama sent Veep Biden to eulogize one of them and sent FBI director James Comey to the funeral of the other one. There was no reason for him to attend either funeral and he didn't.

But when a black man was killed by a white guy, he saw fit to make that a golden opportunity to vent his spleen upon whites in Charleston and by extension everywhere else. Not very presidential, especially when one remembers he quickly sent Attorney General Holder to Ferguson last summer to destroy an innocent policeman but helped foment the burning of the city instead. The Charleston “eulogy” said a lot more about Obama than Rev. Pinckney, who was also a highly respected legislator.

Manipulating grieving people – one doubts that he was asked to give the eulogy...probably Sharpton's idea foisted off on the family or SC officials – in the interest of not letting a crisis go to waste by giving yet another long-winded diatribe was unseemly as Obama (latter-day Harkin) made himself the center of attention, an obvious political ploy smothering a religious exercise and the memory of Clementa Pinckney.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Plato & the Court

The word came down today from Court Supreme,
Thus noted in reverse to mark its theme
Of making laws, not banning or redeem,
In this case denigrating Nature's scheme;
By one-vote-split, the justices ordained
That man may marry man, now unrestrained,
That women do the same, their gender stained
The same as men's—perverted acts retained;
To legalize what Nature clearly bars
Is to blaspheme Creation earth-to-stars...
The Court became the Eve of Eden's mars
In miring of the states in Satan's tars;
So...tell the world perversion is new norm
In these United States, a higher form
Than of millenniums with no reform
But just with Nature always to conform;
The Court affirms with Plato, Socrates
That homosexuals one must appease
By counterfeiting them as normalcies
Though they can never fashion families;
The Court may someday rule that pedophiles
Consorting with “consenting” juveniles
May not be charged because of their lifestyles –
Ah yes...the ghost of Plato is all smiles.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Millennial Church

His friend urged him to seek
A spiritual entity
To help him through a time-frame bleak,
A time of hopeless misery;
He thought about that, thought it strange
And even bordered on inane
But felt compelled to rearrange
His thoughts...or simply go insane.

And so he hit upon a plan,
To wit, some churches just explore
And see if they could help him span
This time and thus some hope restore;
He was an avid hard-rock fan,
Hard metal, too, with its bombast...
So...opposites – those things to ban
Seemed apropos...dial down the blast.

He figured worship quiet, calm,
Was just the thing to soothe his nerves,
A sort of sterile, lyric psalm
Almost like drugs in his reserves,
Though drugs had not helped out this time –
Another reason for the church,
To give his life a brand-new rhyme...
A just reward for brand-new search.

A careful yellow-pages search
Revealed church listings by the score,
He closed his eyes to find the church,
Brought down his thumb on Restore Faith;
A church named Restore Faith, he thought,
Might satisfy his needs, for sure,
Though too much change would not be sought –
Enough for temporary cure.

The next Lord's Day he set alarm
To make sure he was up in time,
He figured church would do no harm,
Might even be worthwhile, sublime;
Restore Faith Church's parking lot
Filled five acres of new asphalt,
At last he found a parking spot
And took a long walk by default.

When he got close he felt the beat
And heard through amps he knew were huge,
He sensed vibrations in his feet
And when he entered...sound deluge;
The music leader wore his jeans
With holes at both knees, threads awry,
His T-shirt pictured palm-tree scenes,
His mike mouth-close as either eye.

There was a praise-team – mini-skirts
For all four girls in hip-hop groove,
Four guys with wild unbuttoned shirts
Joined with the girls in every move;
They sang “Praise God” some fifty times,
Then sang “Praise Christ” some fifty more,
These three words passed for all their rhymes,
He sat there stunned, both eardrums sore.

And then the preacher came stage-right
Dressed all in earth-tones...sort of beige...
With gold necklace that was so bright
Reflected foot-lights lit the stage;
In ear-locked mike he screamed “Praise God,”
And then said “Let's give God a hand,”
The clapping crashed...then with a nod
He stopped it cold...and cued praise-band.

The singers and the band conspired
For fifteen minutes so amped-up
That words were never heard, just mired
In chaos titled “Bitter Cup;”
And then the preacher reappeared,
Said “Let's praise God,” the people clapped,
He preached that Satan was not feared
Except by those when tithes they zapped.

A quarter-hour the preacher spoke,
His ears still ringing, he took note,
The subject: “Fix it 'cause it's broke,”
Delivered as if just by rote;
One size fits all, he then surmised,
Is what the preacher emphasized...
Just pay the tenth and be surprised
As blessings are then realized.

He left before the final prayer
To beat the crowd across the lot,
His misery was not still there
Since he had learned what he was not,
To wit, he was not greedy...no,
Or suckered by the morning show...
Or satisfied with status quo—
But knew of God he had to know.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

The President & Charleston

President Obama dropped in at the White House press room the other day on his way to his Father's Day vacation in Hollywood country (sort of like the Rose Garden charade the morning after the Benghazi massacre)to announce in the wake of the murders in the Charleston S.C., Emanuel AME Church that the blood of mayhem lies in the fact that guns are too available to citizens, thus politicizing a tragedy, a total lack of sensitivity. This was the knee-jerk reaction expected from him, so what else is new?

There are 52 weekends in the year but the prez picked Father's Day to requisition the huge entourage (mostly men) needed for one of his golf-forays—secret service, Air Force crews, ground crews, chauffeurs and all gofers...another example of total insensitivity. Concomitantly, Michelle Obama requisitioned a nearly duplicate outfit, perhaps enhanced by hairdressers, wardrobe-keepers and the like, so that she and daughters could do a European tour. Shades of Hillary Clinton, who visited at least 76 countries while hubby Bubba was prez!

This reminds of the “Big Apple date” the Obamas managed soon after he took office in 2009, requisitioning three Air Force planes, the usual secret service army, ground crews, chauffeurs, the NYPD—the whole nine yards for one night...all while the nation spiraled into deep and continuing recession. That, along with the dual insensitiviries last weekend, are about as “in-your-face” as it gets. Let the citizens eat cake.

Predictably, the media has made the Charleston affair into a virtual cause celebre. Everyone from psychiatrists to people in the street to preachers to cops has been interviewed, especially on cable, in an effort to figure out why a 21-year-old nutcase shot up a church, as if anyone has an answer to that. That's about the same as trying to figure out why Obama, especially in light of Charleston, says partial birth abortion (murder of a partly delivered baby) is okay. There were nine simultaneous murders in Charleston, but the partial-births are just one-at-a-time—maybe that's the answer.

Interviewed on radio by comedian Marc Maron, the prez apparently reckoned that it was time for him to get some shock-and-awe going by dropping the term “nigger” on the public...after all, he can say that word but nobody else better do that. The newsies, at least some of them, have been aghast; but, come on, the prez was just making the point that racism is alive and well though it is much less a problem than in the 50s-70s for young black men.

He's wrong about that. Race relations have worsened exponentially during his tenure, worse now than six years ago, not least because of the war he and his AG declared on the police, especially the white police if for no other reason than that there are so many more of them, not surprising since the population is more than 70% white...at least for now. It's no wonder the Baltimore mayor publicly admitted that she made the police give the professional protesters (Sharpton's gang) both slack and space so they could burn and loot part of the city because a two-bit drug dealer somehow died in custody, though three of the six charged police-persons are black, as are the chief and 54% of the Baltimore Police Department.

Predictably, there's the usual furor concerning the confederate flag that flies on the capitol grounds in S.C. The president said it belongs in a museum and probably most folks either agree with that or that it should be burned. It's a state-thing and the people in S.C. should vote on it. It's in poor taste but railing against it because Dylann Roof, the Charleston murderer, used it in a photo op with himself is quite beside the point, which has been sore for a long time.

To many South Carolinians, it's a freedom-of-speech thing, even though it's tasteless. The Civil War began in Charleston, S.C., and for all practical purposes ended there as the virtual terminus of Sherman's march. The state had been wrecked but that's no excuse for flaunting the confederate flag.

Last summer, it was Ferguson. This summer, it's Charleston. Evil white folks. That's the message. Meanwhile, in the president's hometown of Chicago there have been 208 homicides (1.2 per day) through 21 June or 14% more than this period last year (180 or so), with 76.6% and 18.4% (95%) by blacks and Hispanics, respectively, with nearly all victims (198) blacks/Hispanics.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Transition Is for Every ID

The phenomenon that has most impacted the century-21 culture can be termed as simply “trans”...trans-anything. Lately, the most notorious trans-event has been the transitioning of Bruce Jenner into Caitlin Jenner, i.e., total sex-replacement (gender-replacement for the feminists), though not by the usual transplant procedure. Jenner didn't swap his reproductive organs for a set of women's – could that be done? – but simply settled for neutering, artificially-built accoutrements such as boobs, and rather drastic physical cosmetics to be adjusted by over-the-counter cosmetics, the better to look more womanish and less freakish. The handiwork of the medical magicians and makeup artists was spread through 22 pages of a recent magazine installment so the public could see how advanced both professions are in defeating (they think) Nature. The whole thing represents total disingenuousness, however, since Caitlin can't have children and is thus not actually a woman. At age 65, she/he would not be bothered with this anyway, which represents a Jenner cop-out in that she/he can never identify with pregnancy or birth pains, thus making the whole matter into a publicity stunt that will probably garner millions for Jenner as books and movies, not to mention the priceless porn in the magazine, are derived from the process.

Trans-anything these days represents a market for new entitlements. Students in some school systems who claim to be transgenders are now allowed to choose their own bathroom and locker/shower-room du jour, depending on whether they feel male or female on a given day or, as the Q element of LGBTQ signifies, haven't made up their minds (gender-challenged, perhaps), in which case they might sneak outside. Forcing them to use a bathroom at all is an infringement on rights to privacy, meaning that if they go off-building, all other students and potential spectators must be required by law to “look the other way” or face arrest. Students opting for this method of relief can simply press an alarm activator that will signal all-eyes-closed for two minutes, at least in the proximity of the area to be used. Since the only evidence necessary to prove transgender status is simply the word of the transgender him/herself, the new entitlement is an absolute godsend for the voyeur of either sex...er, gender (to make the feminists happy). There's no such thing as sex for feminists except maybe unisex...or uni-gender, about either of which one must not giggle lest he take a chance on perpetrating a hate-crime, giggles being a form of verbal abuse.

And then there's the recent widely circulated account concerning a local white NAACP official who declared herself (and has made herself to appear) black, notwithstanding irrefutable proof provided by her parents especially in pictures and via birth certificate, that she's white. This, of course, means a new category of transition—trans-pigmentation. There's no reason why the government should object to paying for procedures that make people comfortable in their own skins—that old entitlement to the pursuit of happiness thing—as declared in the Declaration. Just wearing uncoordinated colors is bad enough but the trauma of living in a skin of the wrong color is unthinkable, and doctors who can rearrange folks sexually (or genderally) should have little trouble turning white people black, brown, or chartreuse, for that matter, and vice versa. This would be a bonanza for dermatologists, who nevertheless should be careful with injections or pills lest someone turn out purple or (gasp) polka-dotted. Lawyers could become zillionaires overnight handling the resulting lawsuits, which would bankrupt medical-insurance companies or simply raise premiums astronomically, or both.

Obamacare should cover such a sensitive issue concerning the welfare of the people. After all, didn't the president tweet Caitlin and express his admiration for her bravery? He said she struck a blow for LGBT rights, though that raises the question of whether or not Jenner switched from homosexual to lesbian or straight-to-straight or straight to lesbian or...whatever. Caitlin will probably get the freedom medal or some such accolade before Obama leaves office, though he will not award it account of pigment-change but for the far more fundamental reason, change-of-race—as he would say—period! He is the best example of this reasoning, to wit, though he is half-white (with some of it Irish, of course), he never references himself other than African American, obviously his chosen race. Indeed, one wonders if he might sign an executive order designating the entire population as, if not African American, at least black, perhaps making the U.S. the largest minority in the world, but the president would never do something so racist. The Constitution, though dissed occasionally by Obama, would not allow that anyway since in Century-XXI everything from tattoos to tank-top messages like “Live and Let Love” is a form of speech.

So...trans-racer persons should have the right to change races, and this would not even require a name-change. Indeed, on the basis of his immigration policies (whatever they are at the moment), the president might just as soon be Latino. The medical profession should be able to handle this, though there might be problems with people who are both transgender and trans-racer. To keep costs down, a complete do-over might be possible in just one procedure, though a slip of the scalpel might eventuate in dire circumstances, such as a white transgender/trans-racer man being changed into a black lesbian but account OR mistakes winding up as a bald Chinese lady with a mustache.

This leads inexorably to the mother of all transitions, designed for a person who is trans-species. A bright veterinarian and a bright medical doctor should be able to pool their mnemonic resources and come up with a way to change a person into a dog or maybe a cat or even a fish for those who love to scuba-dive. A trans-species person is one who is uncomfortable in his/her skin and is convinced that he/she is some sort of animal or bird or reptile...the possibilities are out of sight. Such a procedure could also be designed to concomitantly change gender so that a male white guy could become a female pit-bull or a black lady could become an albino homosexual orangutan. The possibilities are endless. The same procedure might be done in reverse but for the fact that animals can't give consent in writing to changing, for instance, from a rattlesnake into a democrat, its natural human counterpart.

Some transitioning takes place with little or no outside help at all, though it usually occurs with parts of the soul/body/psyche/whatever, and not the whole. For instance, in 2001, the mind of Vermont Senator James Jeffords (RIP) changed from 26-year republican to democrat in just a few months after being reelected, thus giving the Senate leadership to Tom Daschle, his partner in crime. In the short time between 2008 and 2012, the mind of President Obama transitioned (evolved, according to BHO) from affirming marriage as only a man-woman thing to being a man-man thing and may still be transitioning, so look out for a new “evolution,” perhaps eventuating in arrangements such as marriage being a communal thing affirming transgenders, trans-racers and even trans-species folks, all in the name of the god DIVERSITY. Home locations could be the White House, Statehouse, any house or the zoo.

In a country so jaded after only 226 or so years resulting in exceptionally free and prosperous existence that transitioning is its collective obsession and tour de force, perhaps the time has come for the nation to be transitioned to colony-status so it can have the thrill of starting all over again. Nations could vie for the opportunity to be the new evil empire, taking over all but especially the U.S. military assets (like ISIS does) in order to keep the new colony down. What a new history that would be!

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

BRAVERY

The president sent out the word today,
With bravery the subject of his bray,
He publicly referred with face of straight
To one who ordered up a self-castrate;
It seemed the man was tired of his own sex,
Indeed, upon his life it was a hex,
But thought that as a woman he could jive...
Indeed, in no way better could he thrive;
And so he told the docs to cut it off,
That he no longer normally would boff,
And ordered up some brand-new body parts
To be implanted as new life he starts;
The Hippocratic Oath was not the force,
“No harm” replaced by “charm” was now the course...
A mutilated body now was “in,”
A brand-new set of works within the skin;
And so the man was changed from fatherhood
By methods state-of-art to motherhood;
With bravery by most folks understood
As on exhibit in tough neighborhood
By those who wear the badge to keep the peace,
The presidential braying should just cease –
Or by those under fire on battlefield
Or on the oceans, in the air, to yield
Their lives if need be to keep peace...
The presidential braying should just cease;
Yeah...presidential braying understood
To mean the president misunderstood,
But what he heaved and spoke was understood
To emanate from skull encasing wood.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Democrat Males—Do not Apply!

A strange though predictable thing has happened on the way to the democrat candidate-nominating process, to wit, that neither party honchos nor the pundits have considered that the nominee could be male. When doubt has been expressed about Hillary Clinton's chances account, for instance, her proclivity for deviousness (humongous outright lies or governmental emails on a personal computer/server, with a third already erased), attention has turned automatically to Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts senator and former Harvard Law professor, known for her bogus claims about Indian heritage. Is there no democrat man up to the job?

Clinton is embroiled in the Clinton Foundation so-called fund-raising activities, tagged by some as influence-peddling on a gigantic scale, not to mention personal enrichment. The millions both she and hubby Bubba have been paid for “speeches” are so transparent as to require uber-professionally structured spin, lest the great unwashed catch on to the subterfuge.

Ms. Clinton is holding no press conferences of substance, lest someone ask about these shenanigans, some involving inordinately wealthy Middle East partners in crime...partners who have bottomless pockets. This money comes from countries in which women are treated as chattel, but never mind that...the cause is righteous. When Ms. Pelosi became speaker again in 2009, she made much of the fact that a grandmother would straighten up the place, warm-fuzzy goodness transforming the nation.

Women HAVE made great gains in the last 20 years not just in government but across the board in the professional areas—medicine, legal, judicial, education. They were supposed to bring goodness and light to the country and above all – HONESTY. They've proven to be as greedy, opportunistic, and dishonest as men. Men, especially white men whose forefathers made this nation what it is (for good or ill but at least powerful and prosperous), have made every effort to surrender, lest they be called chauvinists or, worse, politically incorrect deniers of the god Diversity.

This segues into the difference between men and women. Women are unalterably (but unfairly except for a handful) connected with the “oldest profession,” the selling of the body for money. The men sell their bodies for the battlefield, which promises no personal profit but a grim chance for death. No one with at least half-sense believes that the current drive to put women in combat is any more than potentially deadly recognition of the god Diversity, with an impossible unisex as normal and unavoidable catastrophic military consequences.

The tone is set through the media not just in entertainment venues but in the supposedly “serious” news outlets. The girl-anchor/commentator crowd shows as much thigh and cleavage as possible, not to sell their bodies but to command attention not to news but to themselves. The one consistent exception is Fox News anchor Greta Van Susteren, who looks serious while handling serious subjects. In other words, the news-ladies still consider themselves as sex objects more than as journalists. Compare their appearance with that of the suit-tie-coat-mode of the men anchors/newsmen to get the picture.

So...why is Hillary Clinton a shoo-in? With regard to the above, she would say, “What difference does it make?” She has absolutely no bona fides for the presidency. She owes everything in her political adventure to the simple fact that she married Bill Clinton. As a senator in a hearing including David Petraeus as a witness, she told the general he could not be believed (ironically, perhaps her crowning achievement in matters of integrity); as state secretary, she was complicit in the unprovoked U.S./NATO rape of Libya, with much blood on her hands, not to mention her Rose Garden lie about Benghazi, the lie she even repeated privately and with total insensitivity to the survivors of those killed in that massacre.

The country deserves better—man or woman. She has the inside track because she has the blocs to guarantee it – nearly all blacks, women up to age 35 (they vote), Hispanics, and the 47% of households that pay no taxes but vote how to spend other people's money. But a democrat man, especially one with military experience, could get most of that vote, too. Surely, the Democrat Party can come up with a believable candidate even if it might be male. Hillary in the Oval Office is bizarreness stretched past snapping.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Sex-Change Fraud

The spectacle of Bruce Jenner's transformation from male to female through the good offices of medical people whose morals are as low as his has captivated the media, the main-streamers such as ESPN extolling Jenner's virtues as it did when Michael Sam outed himself last year. Jenner was once a great athlete who brought honor to both sport and nation. Now, he's a sideshow freak like the 800-pound lady in the carnival booth whom people buy tickets to ogle.

Jenner represents the prurience currently remarking a nation sinking ever faster into a morass of immorality that will damn it into oblivion unless soon reversed. One supposes there will now be a trade organization established whereby women being transformed into men can trade their uteri, breasts and other adjuncts to men becoming women for a genuine penis/prostate outfit, thereby making both actually what they mistakenly think they are. Of course, the brains of men and women are quite different but an exchange in that area would push the envelope a genome too far.

The liberal press will scream religious-fanatic-idiots at those who take exception to the grossness of so-called sex-change, actually an absolute impossibility anyway, although most people of faith can be guaranteed to take exception on the grounds that the God-created body should not be violated. What would be next, especially in light of the weird attempts to clone people, thereby also violating the divine design? Maybe the change of a Jenner-type into a chimp, thereby reversing the sacred god of spurious human-evolution?

No...take God out of the equation. So-called sex-change is a violation of Nature itself, whether formed by God, the Big-Bang, the Big-Nothing or any other theory of origination. Integral to Nature is the propagation of people and the propagation of the things upon which they depend for livability. In both cases, the elements of male and female are necessary as they join to form, not clone, their own. Tampering with this arrangement, as already proven by cloning misfires, is tantamount to secular blasphemy, the result of which will be disaster.

Doctors who subscribe to the Hippocratic Oath of healing and doing no harm debase themselves and their clients (not referenced as actual patients) when they take scalpel and carve a human into something else, no matter what they call it. Castrating Jenner didn't make him into a woman. In racing terms, it simply made him a gelding. A human's anatomy or biology can be tweaked, as in an appendectomy, but his/her sex can't be changed no matter how many tweaks are employed.

Chromosomes are inborn and therefore just are. Otherwise, in China, doctors would rearrange chromosomes, probably by state edict, so that female fetuses could be changed into boy fetuses, at least until undue loss of girl population threatens negative birth rates, which actually is a problem there now. The fetus would have no say, of course, so this is not a good analogy to the Jenner debacle. It's likely that this womb-change effort is already in some mad researcher's lab as man attempts to outdo the originator, no matter who or what.

Jenner is just a blip on a news cycle. His brief notoriety will be just that—brief. Others have had this same body-desecration performed but were not high-profile enough to cause media frenzy. The Jenner insult to humanity is merely to point out the moral degradation now operative in the U.S. and approaching warp speed. The virtual glorification of homosexuality apparent in the last 20 or so years—another insult to humanity—is further evidence of decline. Homosexual behavior also violates Nature's design, especially for body orifices and protuberances. The results, especially in terms of disease, have been and will continue to be catastrophic.

Notwithstanding the contrary claims of arrogant medical people, elitist social-mongers and fame-hunters like Jenner, these violations of the human body will not go unpunished. Leave God out of it. Nature, as has always been the case, will have its way, i.e., exact a price for aberrant, perverted behavior. Ask the Greeks, Romans, current Europeans and Muslim butchers, not to mention those whose perversions have delivered them to AIDS, STDs and other diseases.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Wacky Legislation

The legislature this year in Kentucky heaved itself into near hernia-mode in order to regurgitate what its supporters and at least one major media outlet consider wondrous life-saving laws, to wit, making available a drug called Suboxone (buprenophrine and naloxone) and clean needles to dope-heads in order to keep them from killing themselves. This action might even have been as important as the laws passed to make domestic stuff such as restraining orders available to teenage shack-ups who get in arguments they can't handle peacefully...the nanny-state in action.

Circuit Judge David Tapp of Somerset, Ky., in an article surprisingly published in the Lexington Herald-Leader, sort of blew the whole drug thing out of the water. He deals with these people every day and knows whereof he speaks, an important part of which is simply that exchanging one narcotic, Suboxone, for another merely redirects the path to self-destruction. The whole nine yards has to be financed by taxes so the citizens can feel good about saving humanity.

The most dangerous drug/narcotic to both self and others is alcohol but the solons in Frankfort, many topers among them, can't get exercised about finding a drug to stop the drunks from killing themselves and/or other people on the highways or, especially in the cities, with their Saturday-night-specials. Vis-a-vis the drug action, though, they probably would come up with something like legislating Old Grandad in favor of Four Roses in order to get sober, with the added boon of no needles needed.

The judge, using the stats, explained that the so-called drug remedial measures don't work anyway. People are still getting stoned by the bushels and crack-babies are still being damned into existence by women who subscribe to the “numero uno” philosophy and their old studs who just don't give a damn. Between 2000 and 2012, the newborn addicts increased by 2,741%, to 824, and those were just the ones identified in hospitals. A lot more will be discovered when they enter school if they live that long.

The judge didn't mention the needles, but it's a lead-pipe cinch that when a dope-head has a passion for a fix he'll use whatever's available from whoever's available at the time, even if the needle has been passed around through the whole county. The notion of AIDS and Hepatitis will not enter his foggy mind or the fact that anyone else such as wife or child will be affected when he brings in some germ or other or in his craziness afflicts bodily harm or decides to throw the baby in the well. The state's got him covered—either Suboxone, clean needle, or Eddyville.

The judge mentioned that the only way to discover if a drug-recipient is ingesting or injecting properly is via very expensive drug-testing, paid for by the taxpayers, of course. One wonders what would happen if the legislature, instead of pandering to the diversity crowd insisting that everyone be spared from himself, just pass legislation to the effect that every user is officially on his own by a date certain and that his only help will come from an undertaker when he's through with his self-destruction. After all, there's no law against suicide.

The judge mentioned that Medicaid in Kentucky paid about $27.6 million, second highest medicinal cost, for buprenophine products last year. Folks, at least most of the time, can't help getting sick and need medicine—no argument with that. But the ineffective dope-stuff costs could be eliminated altogether if other folks were told to “Just say no,” at least when they're in their close-to-right minds occasionally. Drunks are told to either do the 12-step thing with AA (mind over matter) or hurt themselves or others. Druggies are told to look to the state—your back is covered. The stupidity is obvious.

Oh yeah...the drug thing is necessary because it saves money in the long run, cutting the costs by keeping druggies alive and well currently, thus guarding against big-time costs later when they have to be institutionalized account fried brains and wrecked bodies. Egad!

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Nazis & Jihad

I've just finished reading Atkinson's extensively written trilogy concerning the North African and European theaters in World War II, probably close to 2,000 pages, not counting the voluminous notes, a detailed and often graphic depiction of the awfulness of armed conflict. In the latter part of the third book are descriptions of what the allies discovered in liberating the Nazi concentration camps, absolute chambers of horrors incomprehensible in imagination much less actuality.

Concomitantly, I've been watching the TV news outlets for a year now vis-a-vis ISIS, the nearest outfit I can imagine that's comparable to Hitler's nazis, absolute butchers and torturers without peer. These monsters are marching on Baghdad now and absent any help from the Saudis, Jordanians, Egyptians and Turks the Iraqi government will fold...or not, depending on help from the Iranians.

I watched via C-Span the other day a hearing before Senator McCain's committee regarding the ISIS problem. There was a panel of four headed by retired general John Keane, former Joint Chiefs vice chairman, to make statements and answer questions. The consensus was that the U.S. must “do something” short of sending in the marines, though military folks have a vested interest in making war. One of the panelists even suggested sending in up to 20,000 boots to ostensibly do everything short of fighting, which, of course, made no sense. There was the constant drumbeat that the U.S. is not winning the war in ISIS-land. What war? As the president said in his Memorial Day offering, the U.S. is not at war anywhere now. The war is between Muslims and they can handle that very well, thank you.

President Obama is right in sending in virtually nothing. The Iraqis are asking for more weaponry but anyone who saw the latest fiasco in Ramadi understands that anything given the Iraqis goes automatically to ISIS when the fighting starts because the Iraqi soldiers are not fighters, though supposedly well-trained for years by U.S. troops. They desert their equipment and would run for the hills if there were any. As it is, they just run for dear life. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter indicated that the Iraqis outnumbered ISIS forces in Ramadi but would not fight.

Obama learned a lesson in Libya, on which he waged unprovoked war for seven months in 2011 with nothing to show for it but the dissolution of the Libyan government and a nation torn to shreds, with U.S. weapons winding up in the hands of terrorists in Syria and ISIS. McCain was for that little war, as well as a war on Syria but, thankfully, Obama didn't listen. McCain had photo-ops in both places (though the latter location might have been Lebanon).

In the hearing, the usual things were discussed, even the use of special forces for specific missions as if that would solve the problem. A big deal was made for having more Americans on the ground to get intelligence and direct fire on proper targets, a near impossibility since ISIS operates in towns full of women and children, who are supposed to be spared from what bombs do—kill and maim. The latest news is that top dogs in Iraq have been moving their families out of the country for some time and that a gaggle of top officers were rounded up at the airport the other day just in time to keep them from fleeing the country, presumably to join their families.

McCain seems not to understand the difference between the U.S. killing Muslims and Muslims killing Muslims, which they do with great success every day, egged on by their religious honchos, who are perfectly willing for anyone other than themselves to carry out homicides or suicide/homicides, the latter—through imam-brainwashing—supposedly inducting them into paradise and the 72 virgins.

Supposedly, the U.S. is in the process of training 5,000 Syrians a year for three years to fight ISIS at various locations (Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia). Anyone heard anything about that lately? Al jazeera reported in February that the U.S. and Turkey have made a deal to jointly train and equip moderate Syrian opposition fighters, whoever they might be, presumably to fight Syria's Assad since they're “opposition” folks. Who knows?

McCain worries that Arabs are being brutally abused and killed by Arabs as if that hasn't been the case since Mohammad the caravan-bandit (Saudi Jesse James) pulled off his first raid a thousand or so years ago. ISIS thugs decapitate Christians and Jews, too. Saudi Arabia has just advertised for more be-headers because public convictions (such as they are) are on the uptick this year – 80 this year compared to only 88 all of last year. Everyone grieves for the innocent but the lesson of the last 12 years is obvious, to wit, Islam is a monstrous cult in which the sanctity of life is nonexistent and the Muslims have no conception of democracy. Enough American blood has been shed.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Church in Disarray?

The big (and joyful?) news in the mainstream media is that the number of Christians in the U.S. is dropping precipitously, by 7% just since 2007. Now, just 71% of adults claim to be Christian, down by 5 million in seven years, according to a survey of 35,000 adults by the reputable Pew organization. The decline for the so-called “mainline denominations” has been in effect for much longer, while the “evangelical” groups, though virtually stable now, have picked up members steadily for decades.

Often mistakenly referenced as a “Christian nation” account some early settlers simply fleeing religion-repressive governments in Europe, as well as strong religious convictions and church support among many if not most settlers and their progeny, the U.S. is merely a nation of Christians. There has never been a Christian nation, not even the Vatican in Rome, though Christianity has had a profound influence on history since the ministry of Jesus Christ. Immigrants especially in the 1800s and early twentieth century simply enhanced that circumstance in the U.S.

The U.S. situation is not surprising and reflects what has been happening in Europe, a gradual “falling away” (as the evangelists would have it) from the faith as material and personal considerations have replaced worship of God and the consequent behavior resulting from adherence to scriptural philosophies and dictates. Many theologians have embraced the notion that everything is relative and that there are virtually no absolutes, a very attractive circumstance to those chafing at any behavioral/social restraints.

Since 1960, the mainline denominations (United Methodist; Episcopal; Presbyterian (USA); Christian (Disciples) and Evangelical Lutheran) have collectively lost 29% of their memberships, if not a fraction more, while the U.S. population increased by 81%. The World Christian Database pegs the membership of the Southern Baptist Convention (evangelical) at 20,678,000, though the SBC claims about 17,000,000. Accepting the latter indicates a gain since 1960 of 75% and holding.

The social upheaval of the 1960s-70s (flower-children, hippies, druggies, dropouts, war protesters, LSD-hallucinaters, etc.) began the slide away from religion. This means that a huge number have never been connected to a church or denomination, thus making organized-religion numbers only part of the loss-measurement. As the Pew Report noted, the unaffiliated comprised 23% of adults, a 16% rise since 2007 in the “millennial generation.” Those raised as Christians but have rejected the faith represent 19% of adults.

This ignoring of religion has happened concomitantly with the near-total disintegration of the African-American family unit, the disregard of both white and black for institutional marriage in favor of “roommates,” and the near-deification of homosexuality. Historians have developed these stages of national disintegration: (1) bondage to spiritual faith, (2) spiritual faith to great courage, (3) great courage to liberty, (4) liberty to abundance, (5) abundance to selfishness, (6) selfishness to complacency, (7) complacency to apathy, (8) apathy to moral decay, (9) moral decay to dependence, (10) dependence to bondage.

The. U.S. has just moved from step 7 to step 8, most graphically proven by the president's “evolving” from defining marriage as between a man and woman in 2008 to marriage between two men in 2012. This is the epitome of moral decay and recently proven by accounts of homosexuals bankrupting businesses operated by people refusing without adversely impacting anyone to violate their Christian beliefs. Step 9 is in sight as government gradually takes over every aspect of the citizen's existence, which leads to step 10, bondage to oligarchs (think North Korea) or to another country.

The slide to oblivion begins with people having faith as motivator and maintainer and ends with people abandoning that faith, the abandonment-rate accelerating currently. The object of worship now is political correctness in both government and church. How a preacher has the gall to perform a wedding of two men (at least without giggling) in light of Christ's unmistakable damnation of that boggles the mind; however, swimming against the current has always been hard. Just ask John-the-Baptist's head.

Thousands of churches have substituted entertainment for worship with rock bands producing a cacophony one might expect in a primitive tribe-celebration just preceding a dessert of missionary a la mode. Praise teams in their hole-y blue jeans do the gospel-rock and the congregants wave and weave in ecstasy; however, Christ was not about about ecstasy but about sacrifice and outdated things like marriage only between a man and woman, something foreign to the fat-cat religionists of today, who soon will sanction polygamy just as the Muslims do.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

College-Campus Common-Sense

On 10 May, the Lexington Herald-Leader, Lexington, Ky., devoted nearly all of pages one and seven in its A section to the issue (used to be called problem) of sexual assaults on university campuses. This stuff pops up so frequently that it's become ho-hum, not least because neither the universities nor the paper will admit the root causes of assaults, real or imagined and including rape. Consequently, no serious effort is made to “do something.”

The usual rundown of statistics was presented, this time remarking the disparity between the number of reports of violence to campus police and campus counseling centers. Presumably, a report to a university-paid counselor would result in some action by that counselor more than just a conversation, but that seems not to be the case. This is a quote from one counselor: “I want to see every perpetrator go to jail, but that may not be the right choice for the victim.” So, the victim might as well have been in Philadelphia.

The big deal now is not “No means no,” but rather, “Yes means yes.” About this switch in semantics, a UK bureaucrat said this: “There's a greater level of consent and understanding.” The caveat: anyone who is impaired can't be accused of saying yes. One would think the same thing about saying no, but this is academia-think, often not susceptible to common sense. Apparently, saying yes puts an affirmative enjoyment on hanky-panky, whereas saying no is just so fun-negative. Egad!

Impairment was described in a survey used at Eastern from July 2014 through April—“without your consent account being passed out, drugged, drunk, incapacitated, asleep, threatened or forced.” Of 157 students surveyed, 28% answered yes to having been sexually violated on these bases. There was no definition of sexual contact, so one presumes it was what anyone (mostly females) said it was. With the exception of force, all the possibilities are self-inflicted, i.e., preventable through exercising common sense. It's hard to get drunk (or drugged) without drinking.

A classic example was given regarding how folks differ on that subject. Last year, a UK football player was accused of rape in a UK dorm. A UK hearing was held, with no comment made available to the public; however, the man, as a result, disappeared from campus and probable scholarship. When the case was presented to the Grand Jury, there was no indictment returned. So, the guy lost it all while the gal got her 15 minutes of attention (revenge).

The university is culpable because it maintains coed dorms and allows across-the-board visiting privileges in dorm rooms, both the result of incredibly stupid UK administrative decisions. Item: In January 2013, a female student charged her “friend” with rape in her UK dorm room. The case went to trial, with a verdict of not guilty. The male was sent home. Later in the year, the woman committed suicide.

The “rape problem” has been front and center in the military for years now. In both 2012 and 2013, the DOD gave the statistics for charges and convictions but also claimed that exactly 26,000 unreported assaults took place, coincidentally, for both years. How unreported assaults can be counted is a mystery. The latest statistics have just been released for 2014, an overall increase in assaults of 11% from 2013. There were 6,131 reported, mostly by women.

According to the DOD, 10,600 men and 9,600 women were assaulted in 2014 but didn't report the violations, for a total of 20,200, which, of course, is a decrease from 2013, not an 11% increase even if the reported cases were counted. The exact counts of unreported violations are suspicious, as are those especially of the men although the grand welcome of practicing homosexuals into the military might account for a sizable number.

College- and military-women claim victim-hood and addle-brained officials consider them a protected species, like a hippopotamus, which has a brain to body ratio of 1:2,789. Significantly, especially in university, most assaults are by acquaintances—date rape. With no witnesses, the obvious conclusion is consensual, so the gals need to use their brains for a change and not become “impaired.”

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Governmental Meddling

It's sorta been fun to witness the city fathers/mothers, mayor and Lexington Herald-Leader share a contretemps with the instigators of Centrepointe. The paper even made it an above-the-fold front-page spoof in the 09 May issue. One might get the idea that the world's existence hangs upon what happens to Centrepointe, though perhaps 90% of Lexingtonians couldn't care less about the future of the block-size, 35-feet-deep hole encased in concrete and prepared for most anything to be built there-inside and thereupon.

The grand plans for the block were engaged at exactly the wrong time, just as the ongoing recession began back in 2008-09, from which the country is still attempting to extricate itself, never mind the numbers put up by the administration indicating recovery. The actual unemployment rate is still at 12%, with more than nine million people still out of work.

Lost in all the furor is the pertinent fact that the government doesn't own the Centrepointe property. It can make deals—real or imagined—such as the one in December regarding “no work done in 60 days,” but it can't force the owners to do anything but pay taxes on the property; or, the Commission can attempt an “eminent domain” takeover, as happened regarding the infamous Kelo Affair of 2005, in which the city of New London, Conn., took a number of properties by this method so that a private company could “develop” the land at great profit. In an unbelievable decision, the Supreme Court upheld the government. That site stands undeveloped to this day, the property and business taxes not even a memory.

The developers claim they lost a potential client upon completion of the C-pointe enterprise as a result of the city's demand that the hole be filled (with dirt?) account violation of the “60-day-non-work” agreement, as if that would actually happen, though the city threatened to fill the hole itself. Meddling by the government, which has been operative since the buildings of no distinction on the block were demolished and the project deep-sixed account financial catastrophes, has been constant. The mayor wants to rearrange adjacent Vine Street, let Town Branch bubble-up from under the street, and institute some sort of canal and park...also not going to happen.

In the midst of all this, the paper wants the one-way streets north of Main made two-way despite a consulting firm, at a fee of $490,000, advising absolutely against two-way streets south of Main and indicating that the north side might be two-way without too much hassle, something that any observer can easily see would be so ill-advised as to be laughable, just as laughable as the Commission almost closing Vine at Broadway a few years ago. Imagine the kind of gridlock that would cause.

If nothing happens to Centrepointe in the next five years...so what? Downtown Lexington is a business area mostly, with specific kinds of adjuncts such as entertainment venues and specialty stores that are not impacted by the big hole. Most citizens avoid downtown as much as they can not least because of parking problems and the absence of necessary retail outlets such as the ones sprinkled all over the city with their own parking lots and no lines for entry and exit. Think Kroger or Walmart or Lowes to get the picture.

The elitists have also decided that $38 million (wishful thinking...more like $75 million) should be spent on restoring the Courthouse. Tax dollars should not be so misused. The building is a wreck. Tearing it down would allow prime space for whatever the city solons think ought to be there. But if it must fill in Centrepointe, perhaps it could just move the old dilapidated courthouse into the hole...bound to be cheaper than digging up a few farms for dirt.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

A Broken City...Hopeless?

After every “racial” debacle there comes a time for government officials to reform the system. So...Baltimore. Usually, in a racial mess, real or imagined, the onus is on the white folks to remedy the ill they've caused. This was true vis-a-vis Ferguson (Brown) and Sanford (Trayvon), especially because both Attorney General Holder and President Obama, without knowing any facts, simply pronounced whites, police or otherwise, as instigators of racism and racial acts of violence. They attempted to ruin an innocent policeman (and did) and bring down a city but failed, though not for lack of trying.

Baltimore is different. Whereas Ferguson was administered by whites though two-thirds of the population was black, Baltimore, also two-thirds black, is governed by blacks. Whereas the Ferguson police force was practically all white, the Baltimore force is more than 50% black. In Baltimore, the mayor, police commissioner, patrol chief and fire-chief are black, as is the prosecutor of the six police-persons (3 white, 3 black) she has charged with serious crimes in the death of Freddie Gray, also black. The U.S. attorney general is also black as is, of course, the president and the appropriate Congressman, Elijah Cummings (lives five blocks from the action).

This makes the situation sort of like the Middle East, where the powerful Sunni military forces of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan are faced with the need to exterminate the Sunni military force of ISIS. All three are waiting for the U.S. to “do something” rather than sully their religion by Sunni wasting Sunni. Thankfully, Obama has intelligently told them to take a hike or “do something” on their own. They could solve their problem in weeks, not months.

So it's been hard to blame whites for the Baltimore riots, unless the three black policemen can somehow be exonerated, leaving the three white officers as the scapegoats. A police sergeant in the case is a black woman, so the plot thickens, especially since the whole shooting match lies at the feet of the mayor, also a black woman, whose law enforcement agency (eighth-largest in the U.S.)—for which she is directly responsible—stood by on that Monday night while 100 small businesses were crashed into, looted, and burned while thugs ruptured the fire hoses in use by the black fire chief.

There's at least one plainly common sense argument that can be made regarding racial tensions, profiling and all the rest. More than half the police personnel are black, so put all the black police-officers in predominantly black areas of the city. Then, when a black policeman shoots another black, whether armed or not, the golden opportunity for burning-out and bankrupting small businesses will be lessened, Al Sharpton will not be brought in to provide the mayor's security and organize/inflame the looters. In fact, if the black officers shoot an unarmed or armed white person, there will be no white protesters to contend with, except perhaps for a handful of white college students protesting the white guy's right to endanger the policemen by just existing.

The usual cliches have been spouted – no jobs, gang violence, dope dealing (Freddie's profession), poor education system, racism. Ironically, Baltimore received $1.8 billion of stimulus money for “shovel-ready jobs” a short while back, but apparently the city profited little in the bargain, though maybe a few shovel-ready jobs popped up. More likely, the money was stolen or wasted or both.

The usual cry is in order—more money, especially for education. In Baltimore, the amount spent per pupil annually in public schools is $15,483, second highest in the nation. The graduation rate in 2013 was 68.5% compared to 81% and 84%, respectively, for the U.S. and Maryland in 2012. In Lexington, Ky., $12,578 per pupil was spent in 2013-14. The answer to the education problem is not money.

Every official involved, from the president on down and including the NAACP and other African-American groups, insists on tiptoeing around the problem, which is that African-American adults, especially the men, have reneged on their most important responsibility, that of nurturing the family and keeping it intact. Collectively, they have refused to accept the responsibility Nature, if not God, demands. Until this circumstance is reversed, the permanent and often criminal underclass will prevail. Translated: hopeless.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark