Quadrennial Circuses

In his speech on Wednesday evening (delivered too late for more than a handful of people to hear it in the East), President Obama said Hillary Clinton was more qualified for the presidency than any other president in the nation’s history.  That LIE was almost as huge as the LIE he and Clinton mouthed about the Benghazi Massacre in the Rose Garden the day after that atrocity and later—even worse—to the victims' survivors. Think Hillary in terms of Washington, Lincoln, FDR, Eisenhower and Reagan. Egad!  

The Democrat Convention was at times a comedy of errors, soap opera, and just screaming.  It opened on the note that the DNC chairwoman and the committee she chaired had rigged the game against Clinton’s main adversary, Senator Bernie Sanders.  Too embarrassing to be seen in public, she was denied her role of opening the convention and later forced to resign, though Hillary engaged her to be a “surrogate” during the campaign.  So much for integrity!  

This was not the first such reward.  Obama appointed Susan Rice to be National Security head honcho after she blatantly lied to the entire nation on five TV networks about that massacre.  No one knows yet where Obama was during that blood-bath when four Americans were butchered, but Hillary said in a hearing that she was at home alone.  She apparently wanted no 3:00 a.m. phone calls.  

The Baltimore mayor was finally chosen to open the convention.  She became famous after the Freddie Gray affair a while back when she said protestors should have their space for burning and looting activities.  Ironically, all charges (and convictions when she made the charges) by the prosecutor against the six police-persons were dropped during the convention.  

The actual activity was kicked off by a trio of rappers.  Rap is the latest form of “art” delivered to the world by the black community.  It’s called music—at least for entertainment awards—but it’s just a percussive beat with a lot of spoken words and no discernible melody.  It glorifies cop-assassinations, rapes of mothers (that mother-f*** thing) and being serviced by or beating the hos (the current term for whores), the activity that brings unfortunate children to life to be sustained by various government agencies, certainly not their fathers, who may or may not be known to their mothers anyway.  

Currently, the top rapper is Drake.  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.”  Think of that in terms of legendary black entertainers Nat King Cole, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Johnny Mathis, Sammy Davis, Wynton Marsalis or Quincy Jones.  This set the tone for the proceedings. Coarse! The two people who led the pledge to the flag faced the audience, not the flag. Weird.

The conventions mean nothing, of course, since the only reason for their convening is to nominate a candidate already decided by the primaries, whose rules vary from state to state and always favor the super-delegates—head honchos, gofers and party hacks. Poor Bernie had lost before he even announced since Hillary had sewed up the super-delegates. To her great chagrin she was forced to actually campaign (remember that roped-off march) to get the requisite number. The debates on Saturday nights were designed so no one would watch and give Bernie some recognition.

The overriding consideration for her candidacy and the convention has been that she is a WOMAN, ipso facto, automatically qualified, never mind FBI Director Comey's scathing press conference/hearing in which he said unequivocally that she LIED, an appellation that has been applied relentlessly and accurately in other matters. She lied under oath to a Congressional committee but AG Lynch refuses, obviously, to indict her for perjury, the crime for which hubby Bill was impeached, though he attempted to define the word is in the process, becoming the Grammarian-in-Chief.

The convention was strictly themed “women and blacks only.” They seemed to run the show, designed, whether consciously or not, to exclude men (at least white men) as extraneous to governing (if not dangerous), though ISIS was not mentioned, perhaps not least because men come in handy when wars are to be fought or actual police/firemen are needed, not girls.

I listened to a few major speeches in both clambakes. Veep Biden approached hysteria in condemning Trump and felt the need to memorialize his son again, playing on the emotions of the crowd. Incredibly poor taste. Veep-candidate Kaine fell into speaking Spanish a la Jeb Bush and Rubio—strange at a time when most folks think English should be the only language. Cheap gimmick. Michele Obama predictably reminded everyone that slaves built the White House. Trump spoke too long in Cleveland.

Perhaps the cheapest shot at Trump at the DNC circus was delivered by a Muslim whose American GI Muslim son was killed in the Middle East, who (Trump), unlike him (the father), had never made such a sacrifice. The only sacrifice made was by the son, not the father, but in any case had nothing to do with Trump but with Hillary. Muslims do not need to lecture Americans about anything except perhaps Obama about his rape of Libya.

Hillary made her grand entrance wearing a solid white pants-suit with white blouse. Imagine a man doing that—the white-suit thing. Caveat: I didn't listen to her. It's hard to listen to anyone who appears to be a compulsive liar. Anyway, she's about as charismatic as a hibernating bear. Maybe she should try rap.

In the good old days pre-1972, conventions meant something. The candidate was actually chosen then. I can remember that as a child 75 years ago, fortified with a full box of raisins, I was glued to the radio (no TV, a precious blessing) all day and into the evening and about as excited at the various roll-calls as at a football game. There were numerous roll-calls without those silly little speeches until a candidate finally received a majority of votes. Today's convention—a costly ego-driven sham!

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Minister Repents of Racism

This is the first sentence of an op-ed of 23 July in the Lexington Herald-Leader by Presbyterian minister Robert Cunningham: “I’ve spent most of my life ignorant of racism.” He claimed to be 35, also rolled his eyes at the notion of white privilege and that all forms of hatred were “doomed” when he became a Christian, presumably after age 18.  

This is the Merriam-Webster definition of racism: “a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.”  There’s no mention of hatred but further definitions of race include mistreatment of others so could involve hatred...or not.  

Cunningham wrote that he became convinced of personal racism and is repenting of it but was “slower to admit racial injustice as a social phenomenon.”  As an example, he noted that band-aids are the color of whites (not noticeable) but stand-out on blacks, thus causing them to look (feel?) different.  Actually, a check with Amazon indicates that band-aids come in “skin-tones” and can accommodate all people of color.  Look in pharmacies, as well.  What a stretch!  

He then juxtaposed Pearl Harbor/9-11 with Jim Crow/slavery, the former solemnized and the latter suppressed and patronized (by whites?) as in “It’s time to move on.”  Ask a white kid about Pearl Harbor and get a blank stare.  Ask a black kid about slavery and get an earful.  Perhaps Cunningham doesn’t realize that the most monumental statue on the Washington Mall is a sculpture three-stories tall of Martin Luther King, Jr.  

Cunningham, after a homily about Christ, ends with his intention to ask people of color how to help him use his new-found (white?) sense of personal privilege.  He's fallen into the Jackson/Sharpton trap for whites that consigns them to self-flagellation for the sins of their fathers, as if one can apologize for something for which he bears no responsibility.  

Some religious folks have a self-guilt problem.  In the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1995, a resolution asking for forgiveness of and exhibiting repentance for slavery was passed and presented to the three largest black Baptist denominations, whose leaders laughed it to scorn.  At least one accused the white Baptists of an attempt to proselytize.  Learning nothing from that, the SBC did the same thing last month, well-intentioned but stupid.  

In 1960, almost 75% of black families were headed by a father and mother.  The bulk of the civil-rights and entitlement legislation was passed in the mid-60s.  In the mid-90s, some 75% or so of black babies were born to “single mothers,” and had no documented fathers.  This is still the case, and slavery had nothing to do with it. Fornication does.  

The Jackson/Sharpton approach is that black children must be indoctrinated asap concerning their victim-hood, not because their fathers have abandoned them but because their ancestors were slaves.  The approach does not include the fact that the initial slave traders were blacks in Africa who kidnapped other blacks or physically overcame another tribe and enslaved it or sold its members to the white slave-traders for mere trinkets.  

Nor does the J/S doctrine include that slavery was introduced not by Americans but by British colonists in the seventeenth century long before there was a U.S. and that American citizens banished slavery in far less than a hundred years at the cost of 625,000 lives, mostly white American men.  Cunningham wrote that before his conversion, apparently, he thought the race-card was overplayed.  No!  That card was/is overplayed every day in the black community and by white politically correct morons, lest common sense prevail.  

My great-grandfather (wounded once and near death by disease once) and two great-uncles volunteered (couldn’t be drafted in Kentucky) and fought in the Union Army.  All three were born in England and had no slaves in Pulaski County, Greenwood area.  As a Baptist, I take no responsibility for slavery; rather, I’m part of the generation that tried in the 1960s to be of great help to blacks, but that well-intentioned legislation destroyed the black community, now a permanent underclass.  

The above is politically incorrect but so is Truth.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Columnist Skewers Ark-Evangelicals

Eblen Is No Ignorant Rube

One of the loudest critics (newspaper-wise anyway) of the Noah’s Ark project near Williamstown, Ky., has been Lexington Herald-Leader columnist Tom Eblen, who recently wrote that he had an attack of curiosity, never mind that such a thing (ark, not curiosity) ever actually existed, and made his way via I-75 (aka as Death Alley) to see the figment of imagination of whoever wrote Genesis.  

He described the ark (wooden but mythical, of course) and its dimensions, which were as close as possible to those described in Genesis.   It’s roughly the size of the baby-aircraft-carrier (USS Palau) on whose flight-deck I pushed Corsairs around in the late 40s (not 1840s, for Harvard graduates who get the usual revisionist history).  The carrier was 500 feet long, as is the ark, but the ark has more mass, I’m sure.  

Eblen made a point of the $40 ticket price (steep for viewing something that never existed) and the $10 parking fee which probably had no time-limit.  For a bit of perspective, I checked the best-seat ticket-price for the Taylor Swift concert in Austin, Texas, next October—$429 with fees of $17.70 (compared to parking?) and $1.47 for a total of $448.17.  

The ark-proponents insist that the earth and everything connected to it, including mankind’s earliest existence, is about 6,000 years old and made by God in six days.  Eblen wrote that the “scientists” (didn’t name any) claim the figure to be 4.5 billion years, making it terribly hard to explain away a differential of some 400,000,000,000 years.  Other scientists say it’s about a billion years older but who’s counting anyway, especially since not a living human can comprehend even 6,000 years, much less billions.  

Eblen is flustered because neither he nor the “scientists” can prove the ark-gang wrong.  There are virtually no written records except the scriptures that go back roughly to 4,000 B.C.  Some figures chiseled into rock have been found but no one knows when or what they mean.  Caveat: I don’t accept the 6,000 figure, mainly because scripture also says that to God a day is as a thousand years.  But I definitely accept the ark as a real boat in a real event, the flood. Anyhow, literally accepting the day-as-a-thousand-years figure, the time-line would call for 2,190,000 years instead of 6,000.  

According to livescience, dinosaurs disappeared 65 million years ago, assuming they (the scientists, not the dinos) actually had a clue, which means by my accounting that they were gone long before the time of the ark, according to the ark-gang accounting, thus destroying the doubters’ favorite arguments concerning how to even catch them (the dinos, not the doubters) without being eaten, much less herd them onto the ark and keep them fed and peaceful.  

Eblen claimed to be a “mainstream” (as opposed to “evangelical?”) Christian and so predictably led his essay into “evolution” (presumably of mankind), claiming that most “mainstream” Protestant denominations and the Catholics and Jews buy into that theory.  Exponential nonsense!  At least for me, a plain old Baptist.  

I definitely haven’t evolved from a one-cell slime through the ape ages to the Now, and I laugh heartily every time some arrogant anthropologist insists he’s found the “missing link,” only to discover the tail still affixed or the knuckles not dragging the ground consistent with arm length.  The evolutionists consider themselves the intellectual elite, and the evangelicals as poor, ignorant rubes.  Eblen is welcome to his orangutan ancestors but I’ll take mine any day...straight from Adam through the ages.  

I stand with the rubes and agree with them that man and woman were spontaneously created, no matter when.  I believe they were formed whole in an instant on the sixth day, no matter its time, length and place.  I doubt that dinosaurs (already extinct) ever saw the ark, but if they did, so what!

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

WHITEWASH

FBI Chief Comey the Scapegoat

At least 99% of the time when a citizen appears before the judge account receiving a speeding-ticket and offers the explanation of not knowing he was speeding, the judge will proclaim ignorance as no excuse and levies the fine. This is essentially comparable to FBI Director Comey’s predicament regarding Hillary Clinton and the accursed unprotected private server(s) in her basement and elsewhere upon which she conducted the nation’s business.   

After brilliantly making the case that Clinton was guilty as sin in his official/shocking announcement of her innocence, Comey, in the House hearing on the matter, reckoned that perhaps she was simply not sophisticated enough to recognize the markings of “top secret” on her emails, even though she had been a senator and, more damning, the secretary of state and therefore exposed to those markings for years as a matter of course.   

Using a private server, whether protected or not, she surely knew was an absolute no-no and might have put many people in danger since hackers in other governments and even ISIS could have gained access to classified material including names and places. Comey as well as said that anyone else in government who did what Clinton did would be cashiered if not charged with a crime. Security clearance would be out of the question. Imagine a president without security clearance.  

Possible lack of sophistication was an amazing conclusion on his part and an insult concerning her level of understanding.  Even more amazing was Comey’s assertion that during his office’s investigation no one monitored her appearances before congressional committees, something any citizen could do just using C-Span or any other network covering them.  He did indicate that she lied in those hearings but not to the FBI and said that a referral from Congress was necessary to monitor them, something beyond belief.  

This, of course, left her open to perjury charges since she was under oath in the hearings so it would seem that AG Lynch would insist on action concerning that matter.  She, however, has said the case is closed, meaning that Clinton can get on with her campaigning, and Obama let Air Force One be her campaign commute to North Carolina right after Comey had insisted that not even the president knew when and what his report would be.  Obviously, this was not true since the president would never have allowed that excursion absent the supposed privileged information already being in his possession.

Comey let her off the hook, he said, because an intent to do wrong was not provable. The speeder alluded to above probably did not intend to do wrong, either, and was just careless but that made no difference to the judge. It made a difference to Comey, who said that Clinton was “extremely careless,” so that apparently was okay because her carelessness handling secret documents did not rise to the culpability level of speeding.

This affair explains why people have such a deep distrust of government. Add into the mix that Bill Clinton had a 30-minute tete-a-tete with AG Lynch just before Comey’s announcement that he said nobody knew about…and the plot thickens…or sickens...or both. The agents guarding that meeting declared that no pictures or recordings of it could be made, as if that could happen.

So now the State Department is having its own investigation. This is John Kerry’s turf. Will he consider if Clinton receives any more briefings or a security clearance given that, as Comey might say, she is irresponsible and either stupid or is not acquainted with truth-telling…sort of like her humongous subterfuge regarding the Benghazi massacre, in which the president participated.

The whitewash is in. Comey cited the law concerning this matter but indicated that it had been used only once in 99 years so, presumably, couldn’t be used again. What rubbish! Resignations are in order. Don’t count on that!

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Minister Takes on the Tolerance Movement

In an op-ed of 02 July, the Rev. Robert Cunningham asked, “How tolerant is your tolerance?”  He noted that the ideal tolerance is easily managed in one’s own “tribe” but in the presence of someone from another “tribe” its limits are defined in light of “progressive values.”  He noted that an opinion “not in line with the narrow parameters of our increasingly secular society is now disregarded or even scorned.”  

Far from narrow, the parameters of a secular society (if it feels good, do it) are virtually nonexistent.  Most anything goes.  Cunningham sympathized with the “tolerance movement” (whatever that is, probably political correctness or diversity or multiculturalism) since he said it’s a reaction to the history of shameful hatred endemic to conservative fundamentalism.  

Hatred of whom or what?  Cunningham, who described himself as conservative [but not fundamentalist], didn’t say, but one infers via such strong condemnation that he’s intolerant of conservative fundamentalists, though he wondered if they have inspired the tolerance-movement into becoming severely intolerant, i.e., militant against anyone or institution they accuse of being racist, homophobic, gender-insensitive or in any other way offensive to them.  

Regardless of the cause, though fundamentalists could hardly be blamed, the tolerance movement has become so powerful and vicious that homosexuals, for instance, can bankrupt businesses which do not cater to them.  In this, the tolerance movement has had inordinate help from the government, whether legislative, executive, or judicial, as the general public has had tolerance-movement views imposed upon it.

Strangely, Cunningham insisted that an individual has the right to impose (defined as “to establish or apply by authority”) his beliefs on others and that anyone who disagrees with that position subscribes to “an incredibly naïve and self-defeating construct,” never mind that the nation was founded on the principle that such imposition never be allowed.

Cunningham finally gets to the inevitable point – dialogue with humility, civility and love, the way of Jesus. This is people talking out their problems, of which the nation has had a surfeit for decades with virtually nothing accomplished. Political correctness has exacerbated the dialogue approach since it demands that no one be offended, i.e., be made to think or be so thin-skinned that they can’t absorb reality-talk.  

Intolerance, however, has its place and Jesus Christ was if anything inordinately intolerant.  He also didn’t seem to dialogue very much but considered his positions/teachings inviolable.  He made a whip and lashed the unscrupulous vendors who had turned the temple into a bazaar and threw them, animals, birds, tables and money out into the street – no dialogue there.  He did not impose his beliefs on either government or populace, merely preached, prayed, taught, acted.  

Per the middle parable in Matthew 25, he upbraided the slothful servant, who was fired on the spot.  At the Last Supper, he told the disciples to buy swords even if they had to sell clothes to do so and explained a few hours later that the weapons were for defense/protection, not aggression.  Jesus was not a wimp looking to dialogue with folks about truths he knew to be immutable. He looked the head honchos of his own faith in their faces and likened them to whited sepulchers full of dead men's bones and uncleanness...not much dialogue there.

In other words, Jesus made it plain that absolutes exist and are not susceptible to dialogue, which in the so-called mainline denominations have been compromised amidst all the dialogue that has already occurred, with the tolerance-movement winning the day. These denominations are dying.  

Cunningham got it right at the end when he wrote that the way people treat each other is more important than dialogue.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Tarnished Rainbow

“In your face, God!?”

The LGBTQ individuals/institutions have adopted the colors of the rainbow as a symbol of their community, using them as flags, lights, etc.  Explanations for the use of each color have been made but the overriding explanation is obvious, to wit, that flaunting these colors is an in-your-face gesture to the God of the Bible (and people of faith), who introduced the rainbow to the world as Noah’s trip ended after the great flood documented in Genesis. For Harvard graduates, Jesse Jackson (Rainbow Coalition) did not invent the rainbow and also did not invent God.  

Among the reasons the rainbow was instituted by God was to effect the promise that he would never destroy the world by flood again (Genesis 9).  Simple.  It stood also for the fact that God was making a covenant between himself and mankind…a sort of contract. Most if not all homosexuals may eschew any belief in God but do understand the uses of bodily orifices, with which the contract deals harshly.  

A contract represents a promise by two or more entities to live up to the agreements therein. The people who followed Noah did not live up to the provisions of the contract, a part of which had to do with personal behavior vis-a-vis the natural and easily recognizable parts of the human body, not to mention the requirements of God concerning same. Those requirements included the disallowing of homosexual behavior of any kind, condemned and listed with the condemnation/forbidding of bestiality, as an example of its coarseness.

The professional psychologist/psychiatrist community in the U.S. considered homosexuality a mental disorder until 1972-73 when, under extreme social duress similar to the current pressure of diversity-mongering, it gave in to liberal pressure and removed the stigma without any new information upon which to base the change. It was easier to go with the flow of a handful of social (not clinical) engineers than be right, despite the fact that a fool would know that a penis is not designed to penetrate either an anus or a mouth, nor either to receive such penetration.

The weird insistence by homosexuals that they be considered normal while acknowledging their “difference” demands that they “come out” instead of doing their lurid things in private blows the mind. Until Obama became president, the military, for perfectly obvious reasons, would not tolerate homosexuals. Cleanliness is demanded in the military, but what could be more unsanitary than having a shipmate hand you the salt at breakfast after he had just come off liberty jiving with his friends in some toilet on the beach?

This is to say nothing of the angst felt by the straights at having to put up in close quarters with colleagues owning such bizarre, filthy behavior. Paul wrote in Romans 1 that homosexuals defile each other and themselves through lust, not “love,” the clear implication being that they were not created “that way.” When Obama pushed for same-sex marriage he damned any sort of “family” or “love” approach as normal since the main element of heterosexual marriage is the procreating necessary to continuing the race.

Ironically, both “Gay Pride” and Ramadan, both handled in scripture, are happening at the same time. The homosexuals have been milking the “Orlando Nightclub Massacre” for all it's worth and caterwauling throughout the nation, never mind that Mateen's marching orders were to kill all infidels, whether straight or perverse. He picked a “gay” club perhaps because he was homosexual himself. In Iraq, both he and his victims would have been thrown off the roof, stoned, beheaded or otherwise wasted. This was recommended by Muslim pooh-bahs recently as a fitting way to celebrate Ramadan. So...Mateen killed himself by order whether he was gay or straight.

Much of holy scripture was hijacked by Mohammad, camel-driver and caravan-attacker, when he invented Islam and appointed Allah as the new god that ordered “death or slavery” to all infidels (Americans, for instance). Because of Mohammad's illiteracy, his words were probably copied by one of his 14 wives. Especially with the presidency of Obama, the perverts have won the diversity game not just in the culture generally but even in many if not most “mainline denominations,” which as a result are dying on the vine. Evangelicals are the current holdouts, sticking to the scriptures. Secularism is the new diversity-tool, the devil take the hindmost.

The rainbow is a sacred symbol created by God. To despoil it, the LGBTQ gang has made a mistake. God will not be mocked.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Pecksniffian Commits Schadenfreude

Math Teacher Skewers Evangelicals

Columnist Roger Guffey (op-ed18 June) took dead aim at those “evangelical prophets of God” who described the Orlando massacre as God’s punishment of homosexuals and feel “they know God’s will so well that they can prophesize [sic] to the rest of us.” He then lists sarcastically a number of events such as floods and other massacres in the U.S. (didn't mention the Civil War, strangely) God visits on folks to show His hatred for them and consequent punishments.

Guffey wrote that far too many Christians suffer from schadenfreude and Pecksniffianism and explained both terms to the Great Unwashed, like me. He didn’t explain the difference between the accursed evangelical prophets and Christians but one guesses he thinks the former are hell-bound and at least wonders about the latter.

Guffey’s problem is that he can’t prove the evangelicals are wrong, which makes him sort of Pecksniffian, especially concerning a personal righteousness that qualifies him to judge those insensitive evangelicals, even though some biblical events concerning God’s direct/indirect actions toward people are gruesome, thus suggesting a proclivity for mayhem, pain and death for whatever reason.

Guffey brought up the event – Orlando massacre – that might explain why evangelicals consider homosexuality worthy of censure and current condemnation, i.e., God’s biblically-documented wrath and consequent judgments, such as His treatment of Sodom and Gomorrah, cities predominantly peopled by homosexuals, as outlined in Genesis 19.

Abraham’s nephew Lot was hosting two male visitors in Sodom when he was accosted by rabid homosexuals who demanded that he make his visitors available to be raped. Lot refused so they attempted a break-in/kidnapping with a view toward a grand orgy. In his anger, God struck the interlopers blind and told Lot to get his family out of town. The next morning, God completely destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah – fire and brimstone.

In Leviticus 20, as part of God’s design for an acceptable lifestyle, He indicated that those practicing “detestable” homosexual behavior be put to death, also indicating thereby that their lifestyle was one of choice and not of Creation activity. In Matthew 11, Jesus alluded to Sodom as the most evil standard by which cities could be judged.

Paul wrote in Romans 1 that both lesbians and homosexual men are condemned because through lust (not Creation) they defile their bodies by choice even though they know better, and reminded everyone of God's Leviticus-mandate about being worthy of death in that defilement. Sounds a bit harsh but Paul was not known for attempting to be God, only to quote Him.

The foregoing is not to judge homosexuals as Guffey did regarding the evangelicals, only to explain why evangelicals interpret homosexual behavior differently from Guffey on the basis of what is scriptural, taken quite literally but allowing for biblical poetry, parables, etc. Regarding obvious pronouncements by God/Jesus in both Old and New Testaments, they consider some things right or wrong with no shades of gray between.

Guffey cited Isaiah 55:8-9: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. … So are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” Substitute the word Guffey for the word Lord and discover the perfect example of Pecksniffianism with respect to Guffey's approach to evangelicals.

Guffey ended by writing that individuals who revel in judging others (evangelicals, for instance) and relishing their sufferings (schadenfreude) should spend more time reading the Bible they claim to already know. This is good advice that Guffey should put into practice when considering another hatchet-job on people who simply disagree with him.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

The Pulse Peroration

As more is made known, the Orlando homosexually-oriented nightclub massacre seems more and more bizarre.  Was the shooter actually a homosexual himself, though married and a father, or perhaps a both-ways murderer?  And what about his wife as an accomplice?  Motive: Who knows? The answer is as inaccesible as the gunman.  

The candidates have weighed in, as has the president, whose heritage is Islamic (death to homosexuals) but who “evolved” by his own account and signed the same-sex marriage legislation.  In the Middle East, Muslim homosexuals are thrown off buildings to their deaths or perhaps just beheaded.  So, Obama is caught on the horns of a dilemma, fearing this weird contradiction between his religious heritage and his own subverting of it (raised until age ten in Muslim households) will damage his legacy, the thing of most concern to him now as he plows through lame-duck mode while treading carefully, especially during the current Ramadan during which Islamic pooh-bahs have urged more killings such as those in Orlando.  

Obama claims to have become a Christian under the mentoring of the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah (God damn America) Wright and attended Wright’s church for 20 years, listening to Wright rage against white people and the United States.  Wright was to offer a prayer in Obama’s first inauguration but account his publicly expressed animosity to the U.S. was “thrown under the bus.”  Christian doctrine in most churches (at least until Political Correctness became the new god) also condemns homosexual behavior and disallows homosexual’s ordination as ministers, though Obama’s church/denomination at the time of his participation (UCC) approved same-sex marriage in 2005.  

The president said that Muslims, especially Syrian refugees whether real or simply self-described, should be allowed to enter the U.S (up to 100,000 in 2017) even though they can’t be vetted and this will be the case in the foreseeable future since the U.S. has no relations with Syria, whose president Obama told to turn his country and his office over to the local insurrectionists in 2011, as if he could expect Assad to just do that.  He also told Libyan President Qaddafi to do the same in 2011.  Qaddafi (with virtually no military of substance) of course said “No thanks” anyway whereupon Obama simply made unprovoked illegal war on the Libyans for seven months until Qaddafi was killed.  Libya is in a shambles now, ungovernable and an outpost of ISIS.  This outrageous action against a sovereign state will shatter his legacy as future historians inflict their sharp knives.  

Now, fifty-one U.S. diplomats have signed some kind of memo urging Obama to start bombing Syrian targets in order to hurt Syria, while Obama is already bombing installations in Syria to displace ISIS. The unprovoked bombing of Syrian government targets (and probably the ISIS targets as well) would be the same as Obama's bombing of Libya, which ended in total disaster. Obama has already mismanaged Middle East policy enough and actually should just begin total withdrawal of American forces from that area so the Muslims could settle their wars there instead of threatening the rest of the world.

Trump is for a temporary ban on Muslim immigration but Clinton is horrified at such a thought, i.e., bring in the Syrians no matter what their backgrounds are.  She and Obama claim that this conforms to American “values.”  Neither she nor Obama has any concept of those values, as proven by their well-documented lies, unless they consider subterfuge a “value.”  Consider their tandem effort concerning the Benghazi massacre as just one of those humongous LIES.  Trump is right. Jihadists are holding the world hostage (think airport-lines and mass killings throughout the world).  The Koran and the ayatollahs insist on death to the infidels.  Inviting potential murderers to just walk in and immediately sign-up for all the entitlements is loony-tunes.  

Not only the LGBTQ gang is at risk.  Every non-Muslim is at risk.  

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Ali's Planned Beatification

It isn’t often, if ever, that one is treated to a three- or four-hour funeral (perhaps based on when it began and ended) and it’s hard to imagine that anyone would contrive to plan such a thing. It happened in Louisville, Ky., on 09-10 June. Yes, his entire last rites, according to the plan conceived by Muhammad Ali for his own final gratification or celebration of life or whatever the last rites are called these days took two days, the first in obeisance to Allah, Ali’s god, and the second to treat Louisville to virtually a whole day of funeralizing [sic].

The second day began with a grand motorcade procession started in late morning and using about three or so hours of tying up Louisville streets for a 19-mile trip to the funeral site (about 6 mph), the Yum Center downtown, where the University of Louisville plays its basketball games. The funeral, no matter how it was conceived, lasted for hours and was a combination of Islamic incantation, eloquent preaching, comedy, solemnity, and political speeches, everything from comedian Billy Crystal to a frantic, raging rabbi in a strange garb to Buddhist music-intoning to former president Clinton, who sort of delivered the final dissertation, with only a shadow of his once speech-strength and hopefully without pay.

Since the actual mileage noted elsewhere indicated 23 miles for the motorcade, the final four-mile segment was probably from the Yum Center to the cemetery, so the entire affair was one long experience for the attendees. The old rabbi made a caustic, arm-waving political harangue and actually had to be forcefully pulled away from the speaker’s stand by the master of ceremonies, but the tone of the funeral was set early in the affair by Dr. Kevin Cosby, pastor of St. Stephen Church and president of Simmons College, both located in Louisville, who made it clear that the funeral was all about white racism.

Cosby’s church is affiliated with both domestic and international Baptist institutions so one might have expected more of a bridge than a wall (Crystal’s political swipe at Trump). This seemed unseemly, also, since Ali’s entry into boxing was bankrolled by a group of white businessmen in Louisville; otherwise, he might not have had the opportunity to train and learn his trade. His trainer, Angelo Dundee, was a white guy, so why the “Jesse Jackson” approach, though Ali’s father claimed that the Muslims had taught Ali to hate whites?

Cosby, like Jackson, whether consciously or not, seemed to be proclaiming to young people the Jackson approach, i.e., hate white people and work the system for what it offers for the least amount of effort, like protesting for something or other. Making solemn occasions into racial and political opportunism speaks ill of those who do that, especially those in the field of education. He took the mourners back some 350 years or so to about 1666 to define the time-line of white mistreatment of blacks. That’s about 66 years before George Washington was born and 123 years before the U.S. became a nation.

The most surprising speaker was Attallah Shabazz, a daughter of Malcom X, Ali’s mentor as the boxer converted to Islam and joined the Nation of Islam, headed by Elijah Muhammad, with whom Malcolm X later parted ways account the old man’s dalliance with young girls. Ali refused to leave the sect, turned his back on Malcolm X and even ridiculed him publicly.

Malcolm X was assassinated by three members of the NOI, and one of his other daughters was alleged to have conspired to have Louis Farrakhan, Elijah’s successor via a sort of power-grab, assassinated. Farrakhan attended Ali’s funeral although Ali left the NOI in 1975 when he became a full-fledged Sunni Muslim. The murderous ISIS is the current high-profile Sunni branch of Islam, perhaps beheading Christians in Iraq (a favorite pastime) while Ali’s funeral was in progress.

The quirkiness of an intolerably long funeral, virtually a day-long affair, designed to beatify oneself is strange enough, but even stranger is the fact that a pallbearer, presumably picked by Ali, was Mike Tyson, infamous for biting off part of Evander Holyfield’s ear and spitting it out during a bout as well as being an ex-con imprisoned for rape, but Baghdadi el Baghdadi, head of ISIS, might have been amused.

Ali was unmerciful in ridiculing and taunting his opponents (called Frazier a gorilla) and, ironically, used his hands to pummel people into unconsciousness but was virtually deified in Louisville, wherein the first reattachment of a severed hand to its wrist/arm took place by some genius-doctors. That’s how coarse the culture has become.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

The GREATEST?

CAVEAT ALERT! To some, the following will be racist or insensitive or politically incorrect or anti-diversity or bigoted or disrespect for the dead. It’s none of those things, just a look at how people act in life and react to death, especially celebrity-death, the point of reference being the death of Muhammad Ali, also known at one time as Cassius Clay, Jr. Also, I consider prizefighting a cruel and crude “sport,” marked as much by corruption as by the pain. One wonders, for instance, about the second Ali/Liston fight that lasted less than three minutes.

Ali shouted, “I'm the greatest,” and the phrase took off in both the public and especially the media, both of which have virtually deified him. Ali didn’t say the greatest of what but he’s been termed the greatest of a lot of things by government officials and others such as goodwill ambassador, boxer, representative of the nation, etc.

The term “greatest” needs to be placed in the proper perspective. Most will agree that greatness is ascribed to those who in a good cause make the greatest sacrifice possible, the ultimate being one’s life. Thus, the nineteen-year-old soldier shipped home in a box from the Middle East has achieved greatness, while at age 19 Ali was well into his career, which involved bashing people’s brains into mush for money – not a great cause.

It has been claimed over and over that Ali was the “greatest” boxer of all time, even though he was savagely beaten a number of times. The greatest heavyweight boxer since at least the 1940s was Rocky Marciano, who held the championship in the 1950s. He fought 49 times, including numerous bouts for the title. He won every bout, 43 by knockouts, and simply retired, never beaten. He also served in the army 1943-46 (drafted) during WWII, though he could have claimed to be a conscientious objector. The greatest heavyweight of the last hundred years was Joe Louis, who held the title 1937-49, the longest such tenure in boxing history. In his prime, he enlisted in the army for WWII.

Ali dodged the Draft, however, in the Vietnam era, claiming upon religious grounds since he had converted to Islam and described himself as a minister of sorts. Elijah Muhammad, head pooh-bah of the Chicago-based Nation of Islam at the time, is said to have given him the name Ali. Elijah and the NOI were later condemned by Malcolm X because of Elijah’s adulterous activities with young girls, and was assassinated soon after. Fittingly, Ali died on the eve of Ramadan.

Ali remained a practitioner of Islam until his death, though Louis Farrakhan became its head and is best-known for his hate-speeches/writings concerning white people, including Jews. As a good Muslim, he should have been buried within 24 hours of death. That couldn’t happen because Ali had contrived a two-inch-thick document mandating his “funeral” arrangements, which sort of tied-up Louisville, his birthplace, for hours and hours, especially by a long hearse-processional (19 miles) through city-streets…sort of in-your-face stuff. Ali’s father claimed that the Muslims taught Ali to hate white people.

Ali was convicted of draft-avoidance, given a five-year sentence, but escaped it on a technicality. As a conscientious objector, to dodge the Draft he had to swear he was against all wars, which he did, but apparently had forgotten that he was on the record as willing to fight in a war involving Islam. Somehow (one wonders), this was not introduced correctly, if at all, at trial so he went free.

Much has been made of the three years the greatest couldn’t fight anywhere (all licenses nullified or not considered and passport revoked), thus costing him money. He spent that time railing against the war. Baseball-player Ted Williams batted .406, an unbelievable feat in 1941, had a Draft deferral but enlisted in the Navy anyway in 1942 and was recalled (fighter pilot) during the Korean War, during which he was shot down once, thus giving up five years in his absolute prime time (lifetime average .344 and 521 home-runs). One can only wonder what that five years cost him and hordes of fellow-pros who traded their skills, potential records and money for military service.

Ali was/is an idol for many, but actually he was just the “Greatest Narcissist.”

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Don't Cry for Me, Hiroshima

President Obama has just visited Hiroshima, something no other U.S. president has done.…memorializing the 1945 A-bomb events on the part of the “sanguinary” U.S… sort of a caterwauling apology in behalf of the “sensitive” few (like him?)…the never-ending discussion of the two things that set the tone for history post-WWII – Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He began his speech by reminding that “death fell from the sky” seventy-one years ago. This is the president who precipitated “death from the sky” five years ago onto Libya, one of the weakest nations militarily in the world...and for no reason since Libya was a threat to no nation.

Flash back to August 1945 to a six-week period from December 1937 to February 1938. The place: Nanking, China. The Japanese Army took the city and within a six-week period without the use of bombs, artillery, or anything much more lethal than bayonets and rifles managed to kill about 300,000 people (half the population), mostly civilians and POWs, the greatest atrocity of the WWII-era. How does an army stab to death or otherwise polish off 7,200 people per day without even a roadside bomb or a battalion of suicide bombers, while committing 20,000 reported rapes (maybe one reported for every ten unreported?) and getting the bodies out of the way?

It must have been mostly over by 17 January 1938 when then-Japanese Foreign Minister Hirota Koki confirmed in a message to the Japanese embassy in Washington that 300,000 had been killed in Nanjing (National Archives, Washington, D.C. – released September 1994). Koki probably didn’t mention it, but two Japanese officers held a competition to see who could bring about the most beheadings. The two officers were finally executed in 1947. Apparently, hara-kiri, the honorable way out, was not honorable enough for them, so they stuck around until somebody else did the deed for them.

Concerning the ladies, the euphemism for their wretched status was Comfort Women. These were the 200,000 women/girls, mostly Korean, who were shipped like so many pack mules to the various fronts where Japanese soldiers were fighting in order to allegedly protect the precious “freedom fighters” from STDs, ergo, foreclose their absence from the war, account of VD. The notion that this stopped the rape of whoever just happened to “be there” is too ridiculous to even contemplate. The Japanese were equal opportunity rapists, and their victims – at least in Muslim theology – represented paradise, albeit in the midst of massacres by the boatload.

But what does all this gory stuff have to do with Hiroshima and Nagasaki? For those dumb enough to ask that question, the answer, via other questions, is simple: Would it have been better to bypass Japan in 1945 and thus give that cruel regime the opportunity to continue its bloodthirsty campaigns until it threatened the entire world, including this nation? Is it better to kill the enemy on his soil rather than kill the enemy on one’s own soil? In choosing weaponry, is it better to use the most powerful at a distance…or, is it better to go to the trenches and “fight fair,” eyeball-to-eyeball right at home…sort of like the English/French/Germans in 1914-18?

To rational people, the answers are simple enough. President Truman knew them in August 1945. Americans had been dying at about the 320-per-day rate (counting all war-induced deaths) for some three-and-a-half years. Why should more of them die just because a cruel regime had decided to conquer and enslave Asia, for starters, and the rest of the world, in time? He decided there was no reason for that and could hardly have faced the relatives of the American dead, or the survivors, tens of thousands of whom had been wounded, if he had failed to take all possible actions to end the conflagration started by the Japanese.

At 8:15 a.m. on 06 August 1945, the first atomic bomb, nicknamed “Little Boy,” was dropped from a B-29 known as the “Enola Gay” and piloted by Army Air Corps Colonel Paul Tibbets. It detonated at 2,000 feet altitude and obliterated 4.7 square miles of the city. Some 70,000 people died or went missing instantly and another 70,000 were injured, with perhaps 140,000 dead altogether by the end of the year. Compare that to Nanking. Rational leaders would have seen the handwriting on the wall, but Japan was not blessed on that day with rational leaders…only bloodthirsty and ambitious monsters.

President Truman waited for an offer of surrender, being a rational leader himself and thus expecting, in the face of such a threat of eventual utter destruction, that common sense would prevail among the Japanese leaders. Enigmatically, nothing happened; therefore, at 11:02 a.m. on 09 August 1945, a full three days having passed for allowing reasonable leaders to act, the second atomic bomb, nicknamed “Fat Man,” was dropped from another American plane on Nagasaki, destroying one-third of the city, or about 1.8 square miles. Some 40,000 people were killed or went missing and another 40,000 were injured, with perhaps 70,000 dead altogether by the end of the year. This finally grabbed the attention of Japanese leaders, and the rest is history.

So…was it better for Hiroshima and Nagasaki to happen than for the expected millions, including Japanese women and children, to die in the unavoidable invasion of Japan necessary to end the war? The answer is obvious. Had the Japanese not been defeated, as well as the Nazi Germans a few months before (after having brought about the deaths of millions), American women today would be in the “Comfort Brigades” shipped all over the world, and there would not be a single Jew still alive. When the “sensitivity” cadres look at things in this light, perhaps they will see the light, although one wonders, in light of the mushy-mindedness of those who rail against this country because they are too dumb to see the connection between Nanking 1937 and New York/Washington/Pennsylvania 11 September 2001.

President H.S. Truman drew a line in the sand in August 1945. President G.H.W. Bush drew a line in the sand in 1991. President G.W. Bush drew a line in the sand in 2001 and again in 2003. Though the sands constantly shift, one hopes for reasonable leaders who will always draw the line. Obama's “memorializing” in Hiroshima disgraced this country, which lost 405,000 dead in WWII.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark.

U.S. as BULLY

AG Lets Transgenders & Homosexuals BULLY the Masses

Two social problems are currently intersecting, causing consternation and conflict as well as calling for another interpretation of the Constitution. One has to do with laws in many locations having to do with bullying. The other deals with transgenders (or those claiming that status) using public bathrooms of choice, no matter their biological gender.

Attorney-General Lynch, in hammering the North Carolina legislature and governor for enacting laws preventing this absurdity, has predictably posited this matter in terms of racism hearkening back to the 1960s civil-rights era, although race is not a factor, just bathroom privacy for everyone. Strangely, one wonders why those who claim to be bisexual are not a part of the conversation. Should they also occupy the facility of choice?

How is a transgender or bisexual identified. There's no clinical test to determine transgender-sex. A transgender or bisexual is self-identified, no matter how he/she is dressed or undressed. Apparently, it's all in the mind, which cannot be deciphered. There's no genetic or chromosomal anomaly involved, as is the case with homosexuality.

Anyone can claim to be transgender to frequent bathrooms of choice, no questions asked. A 250-pound male, who may be a child molester or other type of pervert, can enter a restroom occupied solely by a mostly undressed twelve-year-old girl. The potential danger is obvious.

CNN's Jake Tapper, showing considerable angst on 11 May arguing with North Carolina Governor McCrory, stupidly asked if there had been a problem to date. There had been no complaints because the issue has just presented itself in the rabid political correctness craze. Transgenders, with no harm, had simply gone to the proper restrooms. The plot will thicken when that drunken 250-pound "transgender" (on his own say-so) assaults and perhaps kills that twelve-year-old girl, thus giving Tapper his answer.

This is where bullying intersects the bathrooms. Business people have been bankrupted by a handful of homosexuals account, for religious reasons, not accommodating their marriage activities. They can now be bankrupted for refusing the transgenders opposite-sex bathrooms if for no other reason simply guarding against lawsuits for what happens in those bathrooms. Bullying!

The actual bully, however, is the government, the only power the transgenders or homosexuals have for pushing this social engineering agenda. The 99.99% of straight Americans are being bullied by their own government depriving them of their right to privacy without harming another soul. Plain common sense.

A father does not want his daughter subject to exposure or worse. His son should not be forced to hear ribald conversation and even advances by silly women in the men's restroom. High-school boys, prone to pulling pranks and enduring raging hormones, can claim to be transgender to enter girls' restrooms, locker-rooms and showers (already happened in Ky.), then laugh later in their own bathrooms, perhaps joined by some girls for a great orgy all around.

This violation of privacy for the masses will affect business, manufacturing, education and all other entities if allowed to happen. SCOTUS has ruled that a right to privacy exists. Transgenders and everyone else will have that right if the government decides not to be a BULLY!

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Columnist Peel Censures Jackson

There's no argument with Barry Peel's castigation of Andrew Jackson (H-L 02 May) though making it a case for "updating" currency to political correctness mode trivializes his point of reference, the mistreatment of "Native Americans," a mistaken appellation since Peel likely has no idea who inhabited North America (native-native Americans) before the Indians dislodged them and became the current Native Americans.

A long article in the current Weekly Standard took on Jackson, too, though it had to do more with his political shenanigans, like forestalling a banking system. He was ruthless but no more so than current politicians and hardly more coarse.

Peel might wonder how it is that he is what he is where he is in light of history. The Indians were as treacherous and genocide-prone as any people group, such as the Africans, who in the 1600-1800s, after winning tribal wars, either ate, enslaved, tortured or sold the losers or their families to slave-traders for a handful of trinkets.

In other words, history is if anything an account of the survival of the fittest. The primitives have always been at the mercy of those who are inclined toward inventing or grabbing things that make them able to overcome either their enemies or just folks who had something they wanted. Current example: ISIS, the grabbers, who predicate their success on committing terrorism, using implements of destruction taken from their owners.

The Persians (Iran ancestors) comprised an advanced culture/civilization before the time of Mohammad, an illiterate cutthroat who established a religion in Egypt after being the caravan-plundering edition of Jesse James. That "faith" made its way to Persia and throughout the Middle East and all the way to Spain before being stopped there in Europe in the 1400s. The sorry situation worldwide today because of Islamic terrorism is obvious.

A culture either advances or stagnates and then begins a gradual dissolution. The result is that the more fit will take it over. This is what happened with Jackson and the "Trail of Tears," guns against bows and arrows, and is largely the reason Peel is writing columns in Kentucky instead of hiding from a scalper.

As far as the current situation is concerned, Peel would likely prefer the Lexington of today over that of Daniel Boone's era - education, sanitation, law and order, representative government instead of tribal face-offs. He might prefer driving 70 mph in an air-conditioned car over the care, feeding, and general upkeep of a horse.

If Jackson hadn't dealt harshly with the Indians, some other person-of-power would have, perhaps the most graphic and easily proven lesson of history. If the colonists had not booted the British (French, too), either of those worthies would have done-in the Indians and worried about it a lot less than Jackson.

Lesson: If the U.S. continues on its obvious descent morally, militarily and otherwise, it will be fair game for the people-group that will ultimately become strong enough to dislodge this nation. In fact, the North Koreans and Chinese governments could wipe out much of this weakening self-worshiping nation in a heartbeat now while citizens clamor for all genders to use whatever and wherever bathrooms they desire, something really important.

As for the currency, it should include imprints or engravings (if perceived as necessary in the case of pictures) of U.S. officials only. The currency should not comprise a museum of sorts for individuals who have been important in affecting government but not effecting government. Jackson, like Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson, Roosevelt (both), was a president and trying to means-test him off the currency is both mean-spirited and shallow. Re-writing history is beneath contempt.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Bathroom Diversity

He claimed to be transgender, six-feet-tall,
His story: “Just relieve myself, that's all,”
Dressed fine in business suit – yeah, coat and tie –
Went in the women's restroom by-the-by;
Onlookers watched askance but kept their peace,
It was the law that he could seek release
In any bathroom in which he felt peace
No matter if the moralists scream, “cease.”

She was a girl of twelve, sixth-grade at school,
Was feeling sort of icky by the pool,
Had gone there with her parents to have lunch...
Her father bragged that she could eat a bunch;
And then she went to pool to swim and play
While parents went to work...finish their day,
And while from nature's call she sought relief
He staked her moves, just like a would-be thief.

The paper next day published this headline:
Young girl assaulted, raped while others dine
It happened in a women's restroom stall
When it was thought no one else there at all,
Across her mouth a strip of friction-tape,
Her body found in bloody, grotesque shape,
The mayor paid respects to family...
Asked it to understand diversity.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Explanation

Note: Extended illness responsible for non-updating. Hope to be better soon.

What Goes Around...

It's been said that what goes around comes around, and proof of this has been seen lately in the statements by public figures. President Obama recently gave a news-conference lecture (everyone of his answers is a micro-speech) informing the great unwashed (me) that the Senate must do its due diligence as spelled out in the Constitution and take up his SCOTUS nominee immediately lest the nation be robbed of its democracy.

Problem: He was firmly for filibustering into oblivion the nomination of Samuel Alito to the bench when he (Obama) was in the Senate in 2006, not to mention his (Obama's) well-documented disdain for the Constitution in the first place. His disdain for the Congress is even greater as he has attempted to rule by executive order lately.

Problem: In 2009 when Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, as mandated in the Illinois Constitution, appointed Illinois politician Roland Burris to take Obama's vacated Senate seat, Obama, Illinois Senator Durbin and Majority Leader Reid attempted to block Burris from the position (even physically locking him out of the Capitol). The Illinois Supreme Court turned them around and they ate humble pie but the contempt for Constitutional governance was obvious.

Durbin's most distinguishable uttering came a few years ago when he compared U.S. soldiers to Pol Pot's “killing field” operators in Cambodia, Stalin's Gulag thugs and Hitler's Nazi butchers. He tried to apologize “if” he offended anyone but he would have been better served to keep his fat mouth shut about it.

And then Pope Francis, a mere man who some Catholics think speaks for God, berated Trump over the “wall” policy, obviously not thinking about the sturdy wall surrounding the Vatican and the weirdly attired Swiss Guard—his own personal army—that keeps him protected better than the Secret Service does for the president. Trump called it disgrace...it was that but much more just plain hypocritical or dumb – your choice.

His remark was made stranger because not long after his installation and concerning homosexuality he said, “Who am I to judge,” knowing full well the church's stance. Yet, in his wall-statement he judged that Trump was a non-Christian, a frightful sort of judgment he now felt competent to make about another human being.

Perhaps the most bizarre of such statements came from Hillary Clinton recently in an interview with CBS's Scott Pelley during which he surprisingly asked if she ever lied. She answered that she tried to never lie, realized how weak that sounded and elaborated by saying she never lied and never would.

The whole world (and Pelley) knows that her answer was itself a humongous lie. Her lies ranging from the Benghazi Massacre all the way back to the non-existent Bosnian snipers she outran in 1996 are so well documented that they appear in great detail on the Internet to this day.

On a sillier note, Fox's Megyn Kelly comes to mind. She and her Fox cohorts had obviously conspired to settle Trump's hash in the first debate so with fangs bared Kelly attacked him out of the gate for being a woman-hater. He sort of laughed off such a ridiculous charge and didn't even show for the second Fox effort.

On her own program the other evening she confronted Kasich over a statement he made about an early campaign in which women were so on his side that they (gasp) even left the kitchen to work for him. Kelly let him know that 70% of women “work” and are not attached to anyone's kitchen...so there! Just as she helped Trump's campaign, she no doubt did Kasich a favor. Just like Hillary, she hadn't learned a thing.

Former state secretary Madeleine Albright should join Pope Francis in discussing the spiritual status of folks. In campaigning for Hillary she said, “There is a special place in hell for women who don't help other women.” She didn't mention liars, of course, and one can only guess at her judgment of the worst offenders—men.

Yeah...what goes around comes around.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Professor Says Green Bay Team is Socialist

In an op-ed of 29 January in the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader, retired Berea College professor Michael Rivage-Suel attempted to advance the presidential candidacy of socialist [democrat] Bernie Sanders by using as his example the NFL Green Bay Packers, i.e., capitalism defeated by socialism as the best societal construct. He lays the groundwork using the departure from St. Louis of the NFL Rams to Los Angeles, thus depriving the St. Louis fans (not even having a vote) of “their” team, though it is owned by Stan Kroenke, whose evil intent is to make money.

Rivage-Suel said this was an obvious injustice apparently based on the fact that the fans had been supportive, presumably by attending games. Sports franchises are routinely transferred, just like McDonald's, so this is nothing new. When I was young, the MLB Giants and Dodgers were in New York but have for decades been in Los Angeles and San Francisco, respectively. Rivage-Suel believes, despite the bottom line (profitability), that a referendum of citizens, who own no financial interest, should decide the issue.

Rivage-Suel said this: “They [owners] leave without reimbursing the community for roads built to service their facilities ...” and mentions community subsidies such as for construction. In other words, the owners have paid no taxes and provided no employment opportunities. This is absurd, made more so by the fact that governing bodies elected by “fans” have made the decisions.

Rivage-Suel rightly affirmed that changes are made in order to make more money, the “logic of capitalism.” This is why the Herald-Leader constantly makes changes in the interest of the bottom line but without taking a vote of the readers, who have no stake in its survival or profitability (or lack thereof). According to Rivage-Suel, the H-L could not leave Lexington for Los Angeles unless its readers agreed.

By picking the Packers, Rivage-Suel defeated his entire argument since the shareholder model is that of Wall Street, where capitalism reigns. Green Bay citizens invest in the team, which is profitable, to share in the proceeds, not to determine its location. If any bloc of shareholders should become large enough to change anything, it could, including location. Rivage-Suel said this is an example of democracy, but democracy is not the issue. Profitability is.

Example: In 2013, according to ESPN, the Packers received $187.7 million from the NFL (mostly TV-generated) but only $136.3 million in local revenue (tickets, concessions, etc.). Expenses amounted to $298.5 million, leaving a profit of $25.5 million for the shareholders, an example of capitalism at its best. The profit would have been about 50% larger but for some outrageously costly contracts to four players.

Without the NFL input, the team would have gone belly-up and the shareholders would have made decisions on the basis of finances, not location. It was a matter of bankruptcy or relocation. The city-population of 104,000 (a third that of Lexington) could not support the team any more than Lexington could.

Strangely, Rivage-Suel said socialism is proved successful because the Packers have won more championships than capitalist competitors, presumably all other NFL teams. All NFL teams are governed by unforgiving capitalist methodology – the bottom line. Subtract the NFL largesse from Green Bay and there would be no Packers there. Perhaps they might make it in St. Louis, population 2.8 million (greater St. Louis area), though Kroenke didn't think so.

If the NFL teams were governed by socialism every player would earn the same, every owner the same and every management the same regardless of business acumen resulting in success or failure. There would be no incentive anywhere to excel, just to survive. Winning would amount to the same as losing. More to the point, instead of the 12 NFL teams in 1959 (Packers included), there are now 32 (partly the result of combining NFL with old AFL), with TV, a very capitalist enterprise, the main reason for their existence.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Trump-Fox Imbroglio

No matter what one thinks of Donald Trump, it has to be admitted that he has furnished a pizzazz to the current boring campaigns for the presidency that is seldom if ever seen. His latest ploy, withdrawing from the Fox News second shot at the candidates – misleadingly described as a debate – is a gem, the ostensible reason that Fox fox Megyn Kelly is to be one of the interrogators, otherwise known as “graspers for that 15 minutes.”

The notion that the debates are...well...debates is off-the-wall. I have to admit to watching only snippets this time around but have seen enough to come to some conclusions. They tend toward arguments carried out by the candidates with the interrogators, as well as with each other, with lots of fire, no light. The nastiest one was staged by CNBC, which has been blackballed by the RNC as a result, canceling a February revisit and giving the lucrative prize to CNN instead.

Though not a Trump supporter, I think he has grounds for refusing the second Fox effort on the basis that by both word and body-language in the first go-around Fox's Megyn Kelly planned and carried out an effort not to interrogate Trump but to commit character assassination right out of the gate. She was practically frothing at the mouth when she tried to picture Trump as a woman-hater, something the media had trumpeted for some time – silly. Then, concerning the current imbroglio, Fox put out a sophomoric tweet ridiculing Trump vis-a-vis the ayatollah [Khameini?] and Putin. According to Trump, this was the last straw.

It's amazing that the Fox news-establishment, which must have known of the plan, allowed it to go forward; however, Fox gurus like Charles Krauthammer and others (especially with the Weekly Standard and National Review backgrounds) had begun belittling Trump long before the debate. It's obvious that the networks, so-called mainline and cable, have their agendas and have favorite candidates. In other words, they act as much as the campaign officials do to get a favored candidate either elected or at least be a recipient of free air-time or both.

On the basis of polling, candidates were placed by the broadcasters on either of two levels, the lower a pre-non-primetime-group, with the main show at nine EST. This not only was unfair but ungainly, though with the number of candidates so large (democrats don't have that problem) how else to solve the problem? In effect, the broadcasters have much too big a hand in determining who does and does not get heard, even within the debates themselves, though the candidates get in their licks by substituting short speeches for answers to policy-questions.

Trump is the only candidate with charisma – he connects with people, the key element in showmanship, at which he is an expert. The others are t-o-o-o-o politically c-o-r-r-e-c-t to even chance a questionable remark, while Trump just doesn't care...says what he thinks as, for instance, shutting down Muslim immigration until it's proven safe. The elites – interrogators and candidates – gasp at such a remark, knowing full well that most citizens (and probably they) agree with him...just plain common sense, especially in light of San Bernardino and Paris, scenes of recent gratuitous Muslim bloodletting.

The debates would be greatly improved if the interrogators were actual reporters – who are likely to ask the right questions without giving speeches – and not the news-agencies' commentators, who are paid to express opinions, which, despite all efforts to avoid it, will creep into the debates. Kelly, for instance, obviously didn't like Trump so she tried to make him look bad. Significantly, she was the one who disappeared for a while after that debate. In the person of Bill O'Reilly, Fox's uber-star, the network groveled on 27 January at a Trump appearance already scheduled.

Trump's absence may help more than hurt him since multitudes of folks probably concluded after that debate that Fox had conspired against him. On the basis of its panels of “experts” such as the one at six each evening (Baier) and on Sunday mornings (Wallace) such conspiracy did take place, and that's yellow journalism, if journalism at all. The other networks are no better, and one longs for the days of the open conventions and smoke-filled rooms, all the silly Primaries be damned.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Anachronistic Bible?

Preacher Explains How Mitigation Works

In a recent column, H-L religion writer Paul Prather remarked that people often become atheists as a result of reading the Bible and that he could understand that, especially in light of biblical allusions to God-oriented violence such as the destruction of Jericho and incomprehensible accounts concerning such things as the Creation or the impossible feat of a man living three days inside a fish. Prather affirmed that these things didn't happen and that the accounts indicated not truth but misrepresentations by Bible characters such as Joshua and Jonah or the scripture-writers.

Prather is a Pentecostal and thus believes God created the incomprehensibly complex earth and all involved with it (maybe the whole universe) yet couldn't keep a man alive in a fish for three days. His main beef is with fundamentalists who take the Bible literally instead of sensibly, as defined by him, to wit, that nothing is believable if man cannot understand it.

As a minister, Prather missed a golden opportunity to explain that context is important to both belief and interpretation. The Old Testament laws, some 600 or so beyond the Ten Commandments, were mandated by God for a primitive people and had to do with everyday things such as personal hygiene and worship. The violence, both by and against the Israelites, had to do with lessons understood by the primitive mind, to which blood-and-gore meant more than words.

For instance, in Leviticus is found the mandate that practicing homosexuals are to be put to to death. Sanitary-wise, nothing is filthier and more potentially disease-producing than homosexual “sex,” not sex at all but scripturally accounted as simply unnatural. More to the point, this was also God's way of saying the human body was not designed by the Creator for such filth and that the practice is blasphemy of the Divine. The design had to do with procreation and not unnatural ecstasy.

This remarks Prather's main point. Concerning the Bible, he said, “ever-developing church practices and hard-won experience mitigate many passages.” Interpreted, this makes the Bible irrelevant because people – especially in the church – don't like parts of it. This is the same as accounting the U.S. Constitution as worthless because times have changed, currently an accepted opinion politically in some camps.

The Constitution, a man-made instrument, can be amended but the Bible cannot, notwithstanding any work by the “mitigating-crowd.” So, one accepts it or not but it's nowhere near as nuanced or vague as Prather would have it. Its historicity is beyond doubt. Just check both the ancient Jewish and Gentile governmental connections (wars, especially) all the way through. It includes poetry, parables, visions (such as Revelation) and sermons, all of which are subject to interpretation, but the cold hard facts are not.

The disciple John, perhaps Christ's closest friend, wrote unmistakably that Jesus made a whip and drove crooks and animals from the temple (church) but Prather likely would say that John imagined that – too violent – even though Matthew, another disciple, both eyewitnesses, corroborated the account. Jesus called church leaders “whited tombs,” account their hypocrisy, but Prather would say that Matthew, an eyewitness who gave that account, was wrong.

Today, the former would land Jesus in jail and the latter would make him guilty of micro-aggression, the latest racism fad. These examples don't comport with political correctness, the new creed in thousands of churches, so they didn't happen. This represents mitigation that gives the lie to scripture. It's like taking the Second Amendment out of the Constitution...weird.

Prather has not given up on the Bible, however, and even said this about it: “And there's a lot more to the Bible than there is even to Shakespeare.” Wow...what an endorsement! St. Paul would be proud. I'm not a fundamentalist or a “flat-earther,” but I'm not smart enough to figure out which is and which ain't regarding the scripture, so I'll just take it literally, thank you.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Not My Home

This world is not my home
I am just passing through
I find the more I roam
That it has gone cuckoo
My land has changed so much
Now men may marry men
I never thought of such
And prexy says amen
Islam called religion
Enough to make one choke
It is a rescission
Of sanity – a joke
The women now may fight
In Army with the guys
It causes me great fright
A salon in disguise
They sail on Navy crafts
With fetuses cared-for
The men get all the shafts
New mothers go ashore
They put them in the Seals
To go on special-ops
Looks great in the news-reels
And prexy calls them tops
Abortions are the rage
A fetus stops the fun
Expendable that stage
Just kill the daughter, son
Politically-right
Must be all types of speech
If not, invite indict
As smarmy bigot, leech
Micro-aggression owns
The newest sort of slime
If offense one intones
The word-police charge crime
To say what one might think
Is to take on the charge
That one should see a shrink
Perhaps not be at-large
Inviting Muslims in
Proves pure diversity
Though threat to kith and kin
The prez approves, with glee
The nation must take risk
Lest it be judged as mean
And emigres not frisk
That would be too obscene
Police are now fair game
Seen as the enemy
To shoot them brings no shame
A dope-head must be free
One must not speak of God
Lest atheist be stunned
In age that is post-mod
Religion must be shunned
And then there are the trans
Their genders not quite sure
The bathrooms – woman's, man's
They never must endure
A third or fourth must be
In every public space
So they can then feel free
To go...not in disgrace
The climate must be changed
The prez said that is so
Its heat for cold exchanged
Lest harm for golf, polo
And athletes must know scorn
If using growth hormone
Though fans are all reborn
At thrill of broken bone
The Congress in gridlock
Is all that seems so norm
The citizens feel shock
When it reverses form
This world is not my home
I am just passing through
I soon no more will roam
And that is alright, too

And so it goes.
Jim Clark