Transgender GI

The liberal nose is out of joint now because Trump reckons that the military would profit by not getting stuck with sex-changes for its members, who in process might have hormonal relapses or gone-wrong surgeries (maybe infections installing vaginas in men who would rather be women) requiring their absence from the wars here and there. Recruiting nightmare...folks joining up for free sex-changes. Egad!

Transgender GI

The prexy ruled transgenders be
Recruited militarily
Because correct diversity
Means even monkeys must be free
From stigma whether he or she
As per one's sex-reality
And not to what apparently
Was Nature's way...mistakenly?

And so a he who is a she
Reports to boot-camp grudgingly
And finds her clothes are dungaree
As if she is another he;
She gives her name as Mary Lee
And finds her skivvies not panty
But boxer-shorts unwittingly
Thrown in her arms in great, good glee.

Then off to barracks—hup-two-three—
And to the restroom speedily
Only to find disgustingly
Those urinals...oh my, oh me,
And grown men standing easily
Before them, maybe two or three,
Exposed...oh yes...genitally...
Oh dear! Such trauma to a she.

The drill sergeant, no wit had he,
Had not seen femininity
And had not seen her purse to be
A sign that she was not a he;
Thus later off to Barracks B,
Where female GIs all would be
Exposed to her, a fellow she,
And giggle...yeah...in great, good glee.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

DNC Memorandum #3

From the office of the chairMAN 30 June 2017

***Please note the emphasis on the above, made to comport with the style of my predecessor, therefore equalizing the genders while I am chair, which, by definition, she had tilted the level playing field, something the former Great Leader mandated must never happen.  Even though she and now I have made the male/female distinction equal, remember that the chair can be transgender or even no gender (maybe a Q—little joke there) or bisexual.  This will assure the LGBTQ community that the Democrat Party is politically correct and that, unlike the uncivilized republicans, they are not only welcome in the big tent but may aspire to leadership. DO NOT MENTION, however, that the head honchos in the Army, Navy and Air Force are against recruitment of transgenders and have asked that none be recruited. The reason(s) is obvious.

***Motion Picture Mogul Michael Moore, a new DNC consultant, is planning a new movie based on how the Trump people colluded with the Russians to fix the last election in Trump's favor with a sub-plot concerning an affair of two Green Party staffers, unhappily-married man/man-marriage adulterers suffering the disastrous effects of PTESD (Post-Traumatic-Election-Stress-Disorder) that eventuated in a death-suicide attempt (gun unloaded, however), but I will not give away the surprise ending here. Please do NOT be offended by the directive on the cork-board now located by the condom- & salt-sugar-lactose-peanut-caffeine-chocolate-free candy/drink-machine that all weeping in this building still precipitated by the election-disaster is to stop. It's time to move on and face this hard life, especially after slithering merrily along during the previous administration. WE WON is now in the other column.

***Everyone should be encouraged by the hassles/hearings concerning the FBI, CIA, NSA, congressional committees, special counsel, and by Senator McCain (sometimes by Senator Graham, too). All are aimed squarely at bringing down the president, thus sparing the nation of what could be a bloody COUP attempt, especially since Majority Leader Schumer as the natural coup-commander has had no military experience (little joke there in case a staffer thinks I'm serious). The recent repub-wins in Georgia and South Carolina House districts must be played down as actual losses when compared to Trump's numbers in those districts last year. Don't ever mention that the winning Georgia-repub is a woman, but if asked, just explain that Trump would not have supported her if he'd known.  

***The fight among the republicans over the healthcare issue furnishes a perfect tool for explaining the meanness of the GOP toward everyone not in the wealthy class. NOTE: Do not mention that 20 million citizens still have no healthcare under the ACA (Obamacare, for recent Harvard grads on staff), just hammer on the fact that 28 million will enjoy that circumstance some years down the road. Also, interview Senator Collins at every opportunity – if you have plenty of time – to get the “meanness” issue into the proper focus since she is death and destruction on preexisting conditions, including but not limited to the common hangnail.

***NEVER MENTION FAKE NEWS OR CNN! The reasons are obvious. Also, never mention MSNBC since the consensus is that mostly wing-nuts operate there. Example: Rachel Maddow. Never mention her orchestrated performance concerning her “scoop” on Trump's 2005 tax returns, and especially don't mention that they showed he coughed up $28 million in taxes. By the way, the wag who wondered aloud at the water fountain as to whether Chris Matthews' leg still vibrates when he hears Obama speak will soon be assigned to the Durbin Rehabilitation facility to receive sensitivity-training. Durbin himself will give a seminar on How American GIs in Iraq replicated Stalin's Gulag, Pol Pot's killing fields, and Mao's great leap forward butchery, as well as Hitler's concentration/death/camp massacres.

***This is not TONGUE-IN-CHEEK! The DNC has an official APB out regarding Barack Obama, latest civilized president, but who cannot be found, not even on golf courses lately. He's the leader of the party but may not know it so he must be found and encouraged to play his new role—leading in front. Likely places are Hollywood and Wall Street or anywhere else, especially resorts like Trump's golf courses, where people with money can be found and just mildly encouraged to book him for speeches to various groups but at no less than $300,000 a pop, though teleprompters and transportation must be provided at client's expense. The first staffer to contribute news of his whereabouts will be given a day off but without pay. The DNC is not a welfare agency.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

NFL's Latest Obscenity

“Twerking” Now Acceptable

Football will soon take over the sports-scene. Assuming that the NFL hierarchy actually does endorse more celebrating after the end of nearly every down played and enhanced exponentially after a score, as currently reported on the NFL web-site, one concludes that desperation has set-in vis-à-vis getting the fans’ minds off the constantly increasing carnage connected to the game, magnified in especially recent years with the intensive reporting concerning brain concussions as well as other injuries.  

This is in addition to the testimonies of players, current as well as former, who have described in print and on TV the effects and recovery-durations of these injuries, especially the concussions, which are indisputably connected by the medical community to such things as behavior and ailments such as Alzheimers.  Concussions are okay for prizefighters since the objective of the actually-non-sport boxer is to kill the other guy by bashing out his brains, notwithstanding the high-flown rhetoric otherwise.  If this were not the case, boxers would wear headgear, not that such would be of significant help.

The latest celebration craze is something called “twerking,” described in the Urban Dictionary as “the rhythmic gyrating of the lower fleshy extremities in a lascivious manner with the intent to elicit sexual arousal or laughter in one's intended audience.” The first time I noticed it being performed was courtesy of Carolina quarterback Cam Newton after he had scored a touchdown. He just leaned back, spread his knees, and rotated his crotch to everyone next to the end-zone and, more importantly, watching via TV. In man-circles (like the military), twerking is exhibited by simulating masturbation.

Twerking has different levels, “three-pump-twerking” (use your imagination) being a no-no but fewer “pumps” seem okay. The NBA features celebrations, also, a practice introduced by black players as they have taken over much of the sports-world, though I haven't noticed twerking in basketball, but then I don't watch the NBA—terribly boring. In the NFL, celebrations happen after nearly every play, especially if a player is knocked into the middle of next week and struggles to arise if at all. After making a tackle, the perpetrator is likely to do a “crotch-hop” (use your imagination) or run ten yards toward the opposite goal so everyone won't mistake his act of heroism.

Taunting the opponent is also big, especially if he has been reasonably discombobulated from reality or, better, has to be carried off the field on a stretcher, conscious or not. Taunting is more noticeable in basketball since it can be heard by the spectators, much nearer the action, which now is characterized mainly by physical assault on the “enemy,” a good elbow-to-the-nose shot, for instance, in a game with no protective gear and supposed to exhibit skill and finesse but now is more like kick-and-box. Players, many if not most of whom can reach the rim have only 24 seconds to get off a shot so the fans will not get bored actually watching some finesse rather than knock-down-drag-out and slam-dunk.

NFL Head Honcho Goodell explained that the players wanted to have more fun after a big play, as if having a big play was not satisfying enough to millionaire players, who if they manage their wages after a normal tenure in the game should not have to work again. Baloney! It was just his way of affirming that football is no longer a sport primarily but a rather sanguinary form of entertainment. Remember the “bounty-hunter-affair” of a few seasons ago when New Orleans players were paid bonuses to inflict appropriate injuries upon opponents, especially quarterbacks, in the interest of removing them from the Sunday afternoon carnage.

But the white folks love the entertainment, too, just as multitudes of youngsters have adopted sleazy-lyrics “rap” as the music of the day, some guy mouthing obscenities to the accompaniment of African bongos or other pulsating gadgets. For comparison, check out baseball, where celebrations (fun stuff) are done in the out-of-sight dugout and consist mostly of high-fives. The crowd might as well be in Lower Slobbovia. Latinos are slowly taking over the game and make the “sign of the cross” after just hitting a single, much less a home run, which NFL-wise would be at least a hernia-risking two-pump-twerk at home-plate.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

DNC Memorandum #2

From the office of the chairperson, 26 May 2017

IMPORTANT NOTICE: Senator Durbin has been cadging TV-time in the capitol again (almost as much as republican charlatan Senators McCain and Graham), thus suggesting attention to his effort, with the collusion of former POTUS Obama and Senator Reid (perhaps suffering mid-life crises—little joke there), to lock Senator Burris, appointed to Obama's vacated Senate seat in 2009, out of his office (some claim even the restroom, too) and out of the Senate Chamber. Though well-documented, all three have denied this and said they would never do anything like that again. DO NOT—repeat...DO NOT mention these three names in any red/yellow/black/white-papers prepared for any senate staffer or lobbyist, no matter his/her degree of ignorance, account bad PR for the party. Also, feel free to trip any of them if you see them chasing TV-newsies and camera-people or photographers to stage free interviews. The DNC will cover any injuries to them but not you, so be careful.
***While campaigning with Senator Sanders recently somewhere in California (Governor Moonbeam's state—little joke there), I was informed by a DNC whistle-blower (name not given for obvious reasons) that there has been grumbling around the Bush Dart-Board, now located by the condom- & salt-sugar-lactose-peanut-caffeine-chocolate-free candy/drink-machine, that my effort with Bernie is heretical if not sinful since he admits to being a socialist, not a democrat. Regardless of Hillary's similar status, this is not true and a staffer will be handsomely rewarded for writing a red/yellow/black/white-paper proving why it isn't. For suggestions, contact Donna Brazile or Congressperson Wasserman-Schultz, recognized for their mental acuity, notwithstanding the events connected to the 2016 convention/CNN-debate.
***Be careful not to make too much of General Flynn possibly taking the Fifth since Hillary's computer partners-in-crime did the same, not to mention the IRS lady. Remember: POTUS is not Obama and Lynch is not AG so the fix is not in for heavy criticism. Also, use no pictures in visuals showing Trump shaking hands with the Saudi gang recently instead of bowing before them like POTUS Obama did in 2009. This is not even to mention the possibility of both Lynch and Hillary being forced to do the same (the Fifth cop-out) when the big hearings start and the rubber hits the road. Attorney General Sessions might have stupidly (as it turns out) recused himself from the Russian Roulette circus but that does not deter any action concerning Hillary, whom former FBI Director Comey declared under oath to have committed perjury, obviously premeditatively lying under oath.
***It’s okay to slam Trump for his meeting with the Pope since the two can’t stand each other over things like walls against immigrants, which the Pope said are un-Christian making Trump a hypocrite, and climate change, although be careful not to indicate that the Pope, being infallible and keeper of the truth, nevertheless does not actually claim that he can change the weather, much less the climate. Also, don’t mention the priesthood over which the Pope rules since pedophilia is a no-no in most civilized societies, as well as homosexuality, which the Pope seems about to embrace as normal. Remember that the Romans have the largest denomination in the U.S. and it’s largely made up of democrats. Never mention transgenders and it’s not okay to inveigh against abortion since maybe the majority of Catholic women, like most women, stand for the woman’s right to protect her body, code for ridding it of an inconvenient adjunct like a bad appendix or tonsil or fetus.
***Be careful about mentioning the collusion between the Trump-gang and the Russians to get Trump elected, at least for now since all election officials have insisted ad nauseam that the balloting in November was simon-pure and not affected by any outside influences. A raise will be awarded to anyone submitting a red/white/black/yellow-paper explaining how the Russians managed to hack into the voting machines/booths/ballot-boxes to defeat Hillary; however, do not mention that Putin was actually trying to get Hillary elected as payback for her well-publicized interference in his presidential election a while back and was even considering a tarmac tete-a-tete between Medvedev and U.S. AG Lynch, with Bubba thrown in for good measure, somewhere in the Crimea.
***In light of the Manchester-suicide-bombing, do not mention immigration in any town-hall meeting even though the bomber was home-grown, not some émigré from the Libyan al Qaeda. POTUS Trump has been right on this subject but try to call that tragedy a man-caused disaster, not terrorism (especially NOT Islamic terrorism), with a view toward enticing Obama, who made that important distinction, into the organizing trenches he knows so well. It’s already late to start the 2018 campaigns in the hope of turning the House so Trump can be impeached. Also, any sighting of Obama will be appreciated.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Tenuous Tenure

After taking office, Trump should have settled down to governing though a certain number of executive orders were necessary but without the accompanying fanfare.  Instead, the president has turned his tenure thus far into a circus; consequently, respected members of even his own party are justifiably disgusted even though the antics of some have matched Trump’s for inanity and political harm.

Trump’s Campaign tweeting was necessary for getting out his message and combating a mostly hostile media, print and electronic. Now, it’s reprehensible and childish, indicative of a playground mentality and obvious waste of time.  Matching tweet for tweet is like answering stupidity with stupidity.

An effective bombast mattered in the campaign, especially since Clinton’s success had been consensually accepted and needed to be neutralized by sheer numbers.  Clinton was mean-spirited to trot out the “gold-star-father,” actually a lawyer with connections to the Clintons, to berate Trump for a war she, not Trump, supported while in the Senate, thus trying to con the average citizens by insulting their intelligence.  Her mention of the basketful of deplorables (Trump supporters) was sickening, thus she was successfully ridiculed in the massive Trump rallies as insensative and out-of-touch.

Bombast-time is past and hopefully there will be no more rallies.  Trump’s braggadocio might have been marginally effective in campaigning.  Now, it’s boorish and often demeaning to both him and others.  Big crowds create neither jobs nor reasonable presidential decisions.  Using costly Air Force One for publicity stunts wore out its welcome with Obama.

There’s a fine line between an inferiority- and superiority-complex.  Each can drive a sufferer into paroxysms of attention-demanding behavior.  Trump seems afflicted with at least the latter and hasn’t learned that others have far more knowledge and experience than he.  He made good choices for his cabinet (surprisingly) but needs to let the secretaries function without carping criticism.

His choices of a billionaire CEO for State and military generals for Homeland Security, Defense and the NSC were good in that these people are disciplined and have been inordinately successful; however, they’re as strong-willed as he—and as smart or smarter—so he should not bicker with or about them.  They, like Trump, are accustomed to making decisions and giving orders and should not be expected to change.  Dragging his family into places of prominence was a tragic mistake.  Nepotism is okay in private enterprise but ugly in government.

In short, if Trump had done a 180 from campaign methods to governing, he would be sailing now.  Instead, he, like Obama before him, is still in campaign mode.  The most effective tool would have been shutting his mouth almost completely and growing another layer of skin.  He’s done neither.

Other prominent republicans have helped Trump to suffer.  For instance, high-profile Senators McCain, Rubio and Graham seem to have staffers searching congressional halls for the nearest TV “reporter/commentator/network-apparatchik” in order to appear nationwide throughout both day and night.

Each tries to conduct foreign policy, with McCain and Graham having insisted that Obama invade Libya and Syria, efforts both wrong-headed, foolish.  McCain even had photo-ops with his choice of insurrectionists in both places (though Syria was doubtful, probably Lebanon) as recipients of U.S. weapons.  All three waged unsuccessful presidential or veep campaigns, thus might suffer bouts of jealousy. 

Other republican leaders have joined virtually the entire democrat contingent in Congress in going after Trump for the “Flynn affair,” Russian collusion (already investigated to exhaustion with no charges), the Comey-firing and anything else that might elicit simply being fed-up with Trump’s buffoonery but matching it themselves. Vengeance is a politician’s stock-in-trade, and party/individual-loyalty is often not observed when elections are more important than legislating.

Like Obama before him, Trump’s main problems have been self-inflicted, the result of a super-inflated ego with tongue in gear before brain engaged. The one redeeming feature: Hillary Clinton is not president, and the Russians had nothing to do with that.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

DNC Memorandum #1

From the office of the chairperson, 15 May 2017

***Listen up! There are no apologies offered for the absence of memos since my taking over the DNC, which I consider a great honor and applaud the efforts of former chairWOMAN Wasserman-Schultz. This has been a terribly busy time for the chairperson account having to further deal with the IRS scandals when I was an assistant attorney general, the Benghazi slaughter, Fast-and-Furious, Syria, ISIS, Ferguson, torture, Gruber, open borders, executive orders revising Obamacare/Immigration laws and the election in November, which at best was a Pyrrhic Victory for the republicans since they now have to fix the mess caused mostly by Pelosi and Reid (little joke[rs] there). Pursuant to the “Gruber Hearing” of the tenth, a new DNC agency labeled the Section for Consulting Healthcare Underwriters Managing Erratic Results (or SCHUMER for short) is being organized and its mission/contents pinned soon to the Bush Dart-Board, now located by the condom- & salt-sugar-lactose-peanut-caffeine-chocolate-free candy-machine, speaking of which everyone is urged to try the new yogurt-spinach-bar that features ingestion, injection or snorting, with a mortar and pestle and/or saline solution provided for the latter two. BTW, the rumor that Wasserman-Schultz, Brazile and Clinton fixed that CNN debate is untrue and all three have promised never to do that again, presumably in 2020, 2024 and 2028 if Hillary says so.

***Staffers are directed to NOT—repeat—NOT mention the former State Secretary unless it is unavoidable such as in the currently hostile press conferences. If the subject arises, the official line is that Kerry is suffering from PTSDDD (post traumatic stress defense department disorder, for recent Yale graduates on staff). Also, no interviews are to be scheduled with anyone connected to FOX News regarding any subject, especially with the lady-anchors, whose bare shoulders and thighs and outrageous cleavage-displays are designed for the huge republican-voting men's audience, which has the same degree of reverse hostility toward Obama as the New Black Panthers have for Georgia-crackers and Obama/Holder have for policemen.

***The Gruber brouhaha has attracted unattractive worldwide attention (called L'Affaire Gruber-Mal in France, for instance). MIT prof Gruber appeared recently before a congressional committee attempting to explain why he earned $400,000 writing Obamacare so nobody could understand it.  This has made it necessary to properly vet all individuals who are in any way connected to government or the DNC. The former president, as well as Al Sharpton, his then and maybe current aide-de-camp, did not trust the FBI, CIA, DEA, EPA, FEMA, the DCI or even OSHA to do the job so another DNC executive order is being structured currently for requiring that every operative submit to the Mandatory Intelligence Testing agency (MIT, for short) before taking a job, with the exception of anyone responsible for the former president's teleprompters for obvious reasons. In this regard, the wag who clandestinely left in the lounge that poster of the former president saying that POLICE ACT STUPIDLY will be sent to the Durbin Re-indoctrination Center & Gulag when apprehended, regarding which Durbin will offer an end-of-spring seminar on the similarity of American GIs to keepers of Stalin's gulags, Pol Pot's killing fields, and Hitler's Storm Troopers, a reprise of his statements during the Iraq War, which he visited occasionally or at least stopped by at the safest airport and once, with 10 body-guards and a wine-taster, even stepped from the plane for a minute.

***The recently-retired chairWOMAN has been rumored to have said in a speech to the Girl Scouts of Florida that women are justifiably and gradually taking over the government. This rumor is unfounded and the former chairWOMAN has promised not to say that again. However, she still resents the complaints accruing to the Helen Reddy version of I Am Woman not being played over the sound-system throughout the building on the hour. Women are now acting as observers of SEAL-training in preparation for their joining the SEALS in the near future. The president requested a year ago a DNC red/yellow/black/white paper to explain why this is both necessary and useful. Only one paper has been submitted and this is unacceptable, so be forewarned...heads will roll if someone doesn't think of at least one valid reason other than “looks cute in uniform.”

***The evil Fox News perpetrators of perverse propaganda cited the former president's 20-minute speech on the night of the Ferguson Grand Jury decision as a declaration of war against the police and his next-day travel to Chicago (aka the Illinois killing-fields) as his first campaign stop at the time to promote it (the war), especially as an answer to white racism in general and police racism in particular. The DNC was tasked to spin this Fox egregiousness into the former POTUS's love for the uniforms, but not to mention—NOT MENTION—his race in connection to the last two presidential elections. This is called “grubering,” perfectly acceptable in civil discourse since everyone knows the voters, or at least republican voters, are stupid and haven't noticed. As far as Hillary is concerned, say nothing lest AG Sessions consider a Grand Jury for her.

***As mentioned earlier, the DNC is still considering instituting a Department of Gender and has requested another yellow/black/white/red paper on how to do this while still awaiting word from the LBGTQ group as to how many genders there are. National Geographic recently suggested 14, give or take a couple too puzzling to figure.  This hasn’t been settled yet mainly because the American Conference of Transitioning and Ultimate Personhood (known for short as ACT-UP) still threatens to sue something or somebody if not included in the gender-count, but certainly not in the Q group. Also, a complaint from something called the Platonic Education Department Of Pleasing Habituations in Loving Eroticism (PEDOPHILE, for short) has been lodged with AG Sessions, claiming gender-status discrimination and threatening action from some Catholic priests account violation of First Amendment rights/nights. The DNC is preparing a summary of Plato's Symposium for all staffers in readiness for any sign that the former POTUS and now head of the party has evolved on this matter as he did regarding same-sex marriage. BTW, anyone sighting the former POTUS is to inform the chairman of his whereabouts. CongressWOMAN Pelosi is threatening to become party-spokesperson if assured her face won't break.

***Be thinking seriously about 2018. Hillary at last report is receiving treatment for CLD (Compulsive Lying Disorder) and should be campaign-tuned for next year's early start. Elizabeth Warren's half-breed (with a little pilgrim thrown in) image is a great crowd-pleaser and she has promised to know the state capitals by April. The thought that another male of any color might be elected is simply too much.

***Have a great summer but remember that any mention of July 4—if found out—means a pink slip. The current administration’s emphasis on patriotism is discriminatory, racist, gender-insulting and offends Bernie Sanders, with whom the chairperson is now campaigning in the interest of inclusiveness. The chairperson will also travel with a democrat if one is willing to run.

And so it goes.
Jim

O'Reilly the Loser

The big news Internet-wise is the canning of Bill O’Reilly by Fox News, the most watched cable-network, with O’Reilly’s “show” by far the most watched and profitable. The cancellation by scores of advertisers that made his “show” the most watched, most profitable enterprise forced this action. News/commentary is not the primary interest in the Fox-owned empire of Rupert Murdoch but profits are.

Accompanying this surprising affair is a tumultuous shakeup in the Fox News prime-time schedule, with long-time commentators doing the musical changing-chairs game, obviously an effort to maintain the audience by keeping the familiar faces in view, though it’s doubtful that any new/old face (in this case, Tucker Carlson for O’Reilly) will have the “O’Reilly impact,” often rude but informative as well.

I have not been an O’Reilly fan except for catching the first few minutes of his “show,” the monologue about world/domestic subjects, always biting but always fair and square. O’Reilly was not a good interviewer because he inevitably wound up arguing with his guests, often simply talking over their remarks, sometimes obviously losing his temper, especially if his opposition-presenter was highly intelligent and articulate, someone like Charles Krauthammer or Karl Rove. He seemed disposed toward competing rather than discussing and when “out-talked” was not a graceful loser.

O’Reilly sort of followed in the footsteps of former Fox News head honcho Roger Ailes, who was canned last year account allegations of sexual harassment made by several women in the Fox lineup, who, whether ordered to or not, showed as much of their natural assets as possible for the cameras—much cleavage, thigh, and upper body—bare shoulders, etc., sort of “ladies of the night” style.

This obvious cheesecake feature diminished the seriousness of anything they had to say. The men, contrarily, dress to the nines, Adams-apple to the feet. I will be accused of some kind of bigotry or gender-hate for saying this but it’s true and applies to other networks as well.

Fox had paid out enough in dollars and reputation for the alleged improprieties of Ailes and O’Reilly but seems to have a dress-code that invites the leer and the gawking. I refer to these talking-head programs as “shows” rather than information-centers because of this approach, actually demeaning to women since it indicates that wit is less important than sexy attention-getters. By far the best of the “shows” in this venue is CNN’s Smerconish, who never overbooks and lets people actually talk.

Regarding politics, Fox is the lone TV-outfit making the case for the conservatives (republicans), though it’s fair to say it lives up to its claim of being fair and balanced. The other biggies—MSNBC, CNN, NBC, ABC, and CBS—are unabashedly “progressive” (used to be “liberal”) and were/are virtual PR outlets for the democrats, demonstrated most recently in the handling of the presidential campaigns. CNN even furnished Clinton a list of the questions she would be asked in its “debate” fiasco, becoming an object of ridicule in the process.

The CNN apparatchik in this affair was Donna Brazile, who surprisingly but unavoidably was fired and immediately installed—unsurprisingly—by the DNC as its chairperson, which office she doesn’t now hold. The talking-head “shows” on all the networks are entirely predictable, a couple or three interviews conducted by some overpaid anchor with a government official, followed by panels of the self-appointed experts to explain what was said and why.

Both Ailes and O’Reilly (golden parachutes of $40,000 and $25,000, respectively) deserved to be canned if they were actually guilty of harassment. Showmen/newsmen in the public eye have a responsibility to invoke trust due to decency, a vital attribute to being credible in any other way.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

March to Nowhere

Ladies' Day Out, Bigtime

The big news of the weekend, besides the inauguration, was the women’s march on Washington on Saturday, the 21st.  There were similar marches throughout the country and reportedly throughout the world, according to media, although that’s a bit of a stretch.  The U.S. march was led by some foul-mouthed female entertainers, who have been anything but oppressed as they’ve basked in their millions, some mostly just by being naughty and nude. Actress Ashley Judd performed hysterically.  

I surfed to it for maybe a total of ten minutes or less and caught Gloria Steinmen, the arch-feminist, do her screech.  Some ladies of the Congress participated, no doubt to show how they’ve been mistreated by the voters by landing them in Congress, where, despite their participation in this silly “girls day out,” will still be treated as serious.  

I suspect the verbiage was all about equal pay, equal rights…the usual stuff about the glass ceiling, but the only issue that mattered had to do with abortion.  The girls are desperately afraid that the right of abortion-on-demand will slip away somehow even though it’s that proverbial “settled law.”  The irony is sorta cruel, protesting to save the “right” that allows for the murder of vulnerable infants before they’re born.

In some nations women have a legitimate reason for protesting (any Muslim country, for instance), but not in the U.S., where there are 27 female CEOs listed in the S&P 500 companies. That's only 5.4% of the total but it represents the fact that women can compete successfully with the evil men, who besides not denying women the opportunity simply are more successful at working all the angles for the big-money jobs.

The CEO of General Motors is a woman, Mary Barra. Unsuccessful presidential candidate Carly Fiorina was CEO of massive Hewlett-Packard and even joined male CEOs in being fired, with a great golden parachute ($40 million), but the protesting gals' goals are that these positions should be handed to women just because they're women.

Before leaving office, Obama made sure women are eligible now for combat roles in the military, even allowing that they should become Navy SEALS. People with common sense know this is nutty, something not earned but awarded anyway, thus endangering the actual SEALs, who must perform at physical and emotional levels far beyond those of women but whose main concern would be protecting women-colleagues instead of accomplishing their missions, which are designed to break things and kill or rescue people.  

In the U.S., women are gradually taking over the court systems, enrolling in colleges and universities in numbers greater than men, and achieving parity in enrollments in both medical and law schools. They are anything but deprived in the matter of heading for the big-green.

So...the issue of the protest, besides ginning up support for Hillary's next foray into politics after not shattering the prized presidential glass-ceiling, is abortion, pure and simple. They call it privacy rights and the SCOTUS adhered to that privacy, whether or not in the Constitution, in Roe/Wade in 1973.

According to U.S. Data & Trends, there have been 58,586,256 U.S. abortions since 1973. Over the 40+ years since then, the earlier murdered fetuses would have had children and grandchildren, so the actual effect on population could be close to minus-75,000,000...but who knows? Murdered fetuses create no birth records.

The whole nine yards resulted from the election of Trump, and the ladies, as well as the mainstream and mostly discredited media, have as a main goal somehow squeezing Trump out of office but lacking the power of impeachment, much less charging criminal activity. The ladies have latched on parasitically to other victim-movements such as “black lives matter” to prove their point even though they form more than half the populace but consider themselves a protected minority, which automatically admits to denigrating themselves, the most poignant observation concerning the grand march to nowhere.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Congressman Lewis & Inaugurations

Congressman John Lewis announced the other day that for the first time he would not attend the inauguration because he considered Trump an illegitimate president. He lied. He also skipped the Bush-43 Inauguration in 2001 because...yep...he considered Bush illegitimately elected. Both Bush and Trump were elected according to the requirements of the U.S. Constitution. He has been joined in his attention-grab by some 35 or so House colleagues, all of whom have become big news in the mainstream media...that 15-minutes-of-fame thing, or maybe they just didn't want to fight the cold weather. Who knows?

Lewis, along with Senator Booker (black democrat, NJ) and House black caucus leader Cedric Richmond, were given the privilege of addressing the Senate hearing after the official hearing was concluded in order to express their opposition to Jeff Sessions, the AG nominee, something the media said was unprecedented. They heaped humongous vitriol upon Sessions, not that it mattered for anything but exposing them for the racists-in-reverse that they are. Only whites are actual racists, of course.

Their performance was by way of piling more guilt-trip upon white citizens account slavery, as if any white person living now or for generations past had anything to do with it. Lewis, as usual, brought up Selma, where he was unjustifiably beaten in 1965 but Sessions was just a 19-year-old college kid then, so the connection is nonexistent, except that Sessions is white and therefore fair game for racists-in-reverse.

I resent this constant victimization approach of Jackson and Sharpton not least because my great-grandfather and two great-uncles fought in the Union Army and, perhaps miraculously, survived though great-grandfather was wounded once and nearly died of disease once. No Lewis bio I’ve seen indicates that he ever served in the military, though he was draft-age during the Vietnam era as well as in the late 1950s. Notwithstanding that, the navy will name a ship (construction to be started in 2018) for Lewis. Perhaps he was 4-F or had deferments of some sort, the same as Trump.

Predictably, the media has gone ape over the fact that Trump has tweeted a not-too-complimentary response to Lewis’s charge of illegitimacy, which actually meant that Trump is a fraud. Categorizing Lewis as an “icon,” the liberal gurus (nearly all of the media) have castigated Trump for having the audacity to challenge the insult to himself or lack-of-worship of such an icon, but do not mention that Lewis began the whole affair with a public temper-tantrum, a profound insult vis-à-vis the voters, whom he implied as dumber than the Russians…the deplorables like me.

Lewis represents the culmination of the Obama terms, to wit, deepening the chasms among different racial groups, all in the name of diversity. This represents the penultimate oxymoron, making the nation a one-people thing by constantly remarking how they are different, the definition of diversity. Obama has approached everything within the context of race, even to the point of having his attorney general expend tremendous resources and manpower in a futile attempt to crucify an innocent policeman in Missouri.

Perhaps the saddest thing in the whole “Lewis matter” is the exposure of the degree of hatred the liberal establishment had/has not only for Trump but for the “ignorant deplorables” who voted their consciences, just as the liberals insist they did. A sad thing, also, is the fact that the first black to be elected by a vast majority of whites has wallowed in a sort of mediocrity when he could actually have made a difference. He has presided over the Divided States of America, whether through intent or incompetence.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Intel Flap

I watched Senator McCain’s Intel hearing the other day involving the top honchos connected to the DNI.  McCain considers the Russian hacking (assuming it took place) as an act of war, never mind that such an act could be answered with military means, not just counter-cyber activity.   

DNI Director Clapper made it clear that he considers the hacking (if it took place) as an act of espionage and mentioned that it’s dangerous to throw rocks if one lives in a glass house, i.e., that the U.S does the same thing regarding hacking into anything it can worldwide.  The point was made, apparently more or less consensually, that any hacking had nothing to do with the election.   

The hacking that took place, whether from Russia or anywhere else, affected the DNC in exposing its corruption, which, of course, had to do with stacking the deck against Bernie Sanders in favor of guaranteeing that Hillary would crack the glass ceiling. Just the possibility of that happening is chilling if not scary.   

Clapper, a former general, also indicated that it would be well for the U.S. and Russia to find “mutual interests,” another way of saying he agrees with Trump in establishing a friendship with Russia, opposite a strictly adversarial arrangement, which has been the Obama/Clinton position even to the extent of Hillary meddling in the Russian election involving Putin’s presidency.  This is not to say that governments must not meddle in the elections in other countries when their own interests are involved.  This world is not Camelot and all governments do not play by the same rules, meaning that taking the the low road (if that can be defined internationally) is always a possibility.  

McCain’s position is hypocritical, of course, in that he, along with Senators Graham and Lieberman, fomented the unprovoked U.S. unilateral attack (NATO not a significant factor) against Libya, totally unauthorized either legally or Constitutionally.  It was a monstrous war-crime that cost thousands of lives over a seven-month period.  McCain and Graham also tried to get Obama to attack Syria, which he almost did, though he provided weaponry against both of those sovereign nations, meddling in their civil wars.   

Putin saved Obama's bacon (those silly red lines) when he took over the affairs of the Middle East, essentially telling Obama to bug out, which he did, and wisely so.  So, when McCain complains about the actual espionage as an act of war, he condemns himself and his position by his own actions, which, as opposed to espionage, actually did involve acts of war.  

A large segment of the current issue of TIME magazine is devoted to this subject, probably because of all the ballyhoo generated by democrats to make a big deal out of nothing.  Supposedly, WikiLeaks guru Julian Assange received hacker-info from the Russians and made it public, thus somehow hurting Clinton's campaign, which she deep-sixed herself account just opening her mouth and posturing, especially as a woman whose time had come.  Assange disavows any Russian connection and folks may believe him or not.  

On page 26 of TIME is a description of this country's efforts to ferret out the private actors linked to the Russian hacking, in which is this phrase: “...which the U.S. spies believed was the main organization behind the influence operation.”  The obvious inference is that the CIA and perhaps the NSA participate in clandestine cyber-activity all the time, not just the Russians.  One hopes this is true and that U.S. intel agencies know even more about Russian secrets than the Russkies know about those of the U.S.  

In the Senate hearing on 11 January of Rex Tillerson as the next State Secretary, the democrats came out with fangs bared, some especially concerned about the Russian hacking, particularly relative to Putin’s authorization of it, as if Tillerson knows more than anyone else or could do much about what the current administration as well as Clinton’s private server-operators were not able to do, though the president said in a recent press conference that he told Putin to “cut it out.”  

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Professor Introduces Fourth Reich

Hitler Reincarnated as Trump

The far-left-fringe of the Democrat Party remains in meltdown following the election, the latest op-ed in the Herald-Leader by retired Berea College professor Mike Rivage-Seul using the customary resort to condemn somebody or something unquestionably bad, i.e., equating same with Hitler and the Third Reich. In his screed of 26 December, he uses Trump EPA-head nominee Scott Pruitt as the fomenter of an American “revolution” account his threatening to destroy the nation (actually the world) by changing the climate.   

Pruitt, Oklahoma attorney general, believes in states-rights, taking issue with Obama, who declared that he would shut down the electricity-furnishing companies and make every user’s costs “skyrocket,” besides saving the planet in the process. He's largely succeeded with the former, not the latter. Rivage-Seul repeats the totally false claim that virtually all scientists believe man is making the world intolerably hotter by emitting most of the carbon dioxide that enters the atmosphere.

Predictably, Rivage-Seul noted that Clinton got a plurality of the vote but didn't mention that the differential just in California (some 4.3 million votes) was more than the national differential-figure. This is why the founders instituted the electoral college guaranteeing that no one state could so domineer an election that it could by itself virtually choose the president.

The professor quoted Jefferson regarding the “unalienable right to life,” claiming Pruitt (actually Trump) will be guilty of something like monarchic power since his making the earth hotter would destroy life (“genocide far worse than Adolf Hitler's,” his exact wording), ergo, the responsibility of the people to rise up against a government not guaranteeing that life-right.

More to the point is the arrogance of the alarmists, who, despite no significant success in connecting CO2, man-made or otherwise, to climate change, are determined to force the U.S. into even more regulations.  Their ability to make measurements, charts and demonstrably proven inaccurate computer models does not deter them. 

The far saner reasons for climate-change are the variance in numbers of sun-spots (holes) in the sun's surface in given eras and the overwhelming influence of the oceans covering 74% of the earth's surface. These oceans sequester CO2 gained from land foliage and runoff, for instance, then release or withhold it automatically as a natural phenomenon to stabilize temperature. Man's pitifully small contribution means little.

The fact that climate has changed sometimes radically throughout history under diverse conditions (industrialization or not, for instance), means that outside forces, not men’s forces, change earth’s fundamental conditions.  This is why the sunspot/ocean theory is eminently superior to the man-made stuff regarding the climate.

The earth is part of the cosmos, mysteriously designed/inculcated with incomprehensible relationships among the suns/planets/stars, and no one can explain how that fact affects earth's climate. The experts claim that the Ohio River was gouged out by a withdrawing glacier during one of the ice-ages, for instance, without any help from man.

Man can deal with local atmosphere, ridding it of acid rain, for instance, or fossil-fuel emissions. The diameter of the earth is 7,926 miles at the equator (40 less pole to pole), but the deepest hole ever drilled (Kola Peninsula—Russia) went down 7.6 miles, a distance so miniscule by comparison that man has no idea what the earth-interior comprises, whether tectonic plates or anything else, much less can conjecture how this (earth's inner temps/configuration) affects climate.

The accidental self-exposed hoax (emails by UN scientists who cooked the books in 2009) proved the political aspect of this matter – cap-and-trade. Men of science are lucky to accurately predict weather four days in advance, much less presume to decipher the grand design, however they deem its origination. For people of faith, God created the cosmos according to his design, which indicates that God and not man controls the sun’s locus and sphere of influence, including the earth, the clearer implication being that God, not man, controls the cosmos and the earth, including its climate.

So...the sky is not falling nor has the global temperature warmed in the last 20 years or so, thus threatening that unalienable right.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Professor Excoriates Trump

Exemplifies Safe-Space College Campuses

The regularly featured words of wisdom delivered in the Lexington Herald-Leader from the halls of academia spewed forth on 18 December from Benjamin Knoll, a professor at Centre College, who began his op-ed thusly: “Not kidding around,” as if one, after reading his piece, might accidentally dissolve into laughter.  Actually, I did.  

The professor then points out seven areas in which, “Donald Trump is actively threatening to weaken American democracy.”  One wonders at the difference between actively threatening and just plain threatening, but why torture the semantics?  One suspects the professor actually meant maliciously threatening, but didn’t want to be accused of micro-aggression, currently academia’s boogie-bear, a definite no-no, almost as sacrosanct as not raping drunk/doped coeds at frat parties they attend to become drunk or doped or both.  

Knoll accused Trump of attempting to foreclose free speech by threatening the revocation of citizenship account flag-burning, apparently not understanding that legislation/referendums amend the Constitution, not individuals. He accused Trump of attempting to interfere with non-violent protests planned for inauguration weekend in D.C., though I suspect the D.C. police are gearing up for the non-violence, especially since the protesters that need watching will be the usual professionals that burned up Ferguson, Missouri, twice and Baltimore once.

The puzzler: Knoll cited the Trump campaign for promising to impose a ban on Muslim-immigration in violation of “First Amendment guarantees of freedom of religion,” apparently not realizing that the amendment applies only to U.S. citizens, not to Muslims from the desert or anyone else. In any case, Trump only reflected the thinking of Hillary Clinton's “basket of deplorables,” the great unwashed “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic” folks, and irredeemably so…hopeless cases like me.

Inviting potential/actual suicide/homicide bombers into the country seems rather dim-witted but warm-fuzzy, hugs-all-around elitist academics see the larger perspective, the protection of these non-citizen-butchers' right to practice their murderous religion in the U.S. They practiced that right in Cairo the other day, wasting 25 in a Catholic Church bombing. Or...remember gay Paree – that theater as well as Charlie Hebdo, Nice and now Berlin (trucks as weapons), Boston, etc. Awarding this “religious right” is like inviting cancer into one's body...stupid.  

Knoll accused Trump of defiling the press by “bullying and criticizing news reporters,” notwithstanding that all the top media except Fox News openly and unashamedly promoted Clinton, a basket-case herself as far as making sense is concerned. The professor then accused Trump of trying to silence critics through intimidation on Twitter but doesn't mention that he tweets, too, one of his latest being “I suppose it's possible that a war with China will help make America great again. I'll admit I'm befuddled, though. Can anyone help clarify?” Egad! One hopes Knoll forgot and was just “kidding around.”

Knoll accused Trump of falsely claiming widespread voter-fraud. Just the current attempts of Clinton-worshipers to defame the Constitutional electoral college provision is all that's needed to prove Trump's point.

Knoll continued the ninth-grade civics lesson by accusing Trump of “attempting to weaken American institutions by siding with a foreign government over the U.S. intelligence community about Russian interference with our electoral process.” Okay...the Russkies (definitely not Trump) are accused of hacking into the Democratic National Committee, where they discovered that then-head honcho Wasserman Schultz, Podesta and their partners in crime blew off democrat Hillary-challenger Bernie Sanders, and Donna Brazile (currently rewarded as Schultz's replacement) fed debate info to Hillary's apparatchiks, though it didn't help the empty pants-suit.

Knoll didn't explain how this affected the election unless he wondered WWPD (what would Putin do) as the deciding factor while voting. Unbelievably (well...okay...academia-speak excused), Knoll finished with this gem: “Now is the time for the American people to show that they deserve the democracy they have inherited...”. Absolutely not! They do not deserve the democracy they have inherited from Obama/Clinton. They deserve much better than that and hopefully Trump will help deliver it. If not, God help us!

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Trump & the CIA/FBI

CNN talk-radio host Smerconish is my favorite not because I agree with him most of the time—I don’t—but because he allows his interviewees sufficient time to state their opinions and seldom interrupts no matter how profoundly he may disagree with them…he doesn’t lose his cool.  He almost lost it, though, in his 10 December segment involving Trump communications director, Sean Spicer, and came out looking so bad he admitted he forgot his place in the programming.  

Smerconish tried to make the point that Trump doesn’t trust his own CIA with respect to whether or not the agency is right in accusing the Russians of hacking into the U.S. election in some way or other, noting that some entity DID hack into the DNC apparatus during the campaign and that it has been alleged that the Russians hacked into the RNC outfit, as well, with the resulting information concerning only the DNC being made public…supposedly unfair in favor of Trump. The info (allegedly via WickiLeaks) did culminate in the firing of then-DNC head honcho Wasserman just as she was to initiate the July convention.  

Much was also made of the fact that Trump does not indulge in the daily briefings that allegedly Obama receives.  It’s doubtful that anyone knows how diligently or seriously Obama takes the briefings, either.  As to Trump’s possible distrust of the CIA (anathema to Smerconish), Spicer ate Smerconish’s lunch in a lengthy back-and-forth in which Spicer had his ducks in a row and Smerconish did not.  The upshot was/is that no one actually knows what if anything the Russians did but Spicer made it very clear that the electoral college victory depended not at all on whatever hacking did or did not take place.  

Trump, if he does not trust the CIA, possibly remembers that the CIA reported allegedly false info (WMD in Iraq) that resulted in that wasteful and ineffective war.  I disagree because the intel agencies of a number of developed nations made the same claim, and I believe that Saddam moved the WMD probably to his neighbor Syria probably at night between September 2002 and March 2003.  This is the subject of my novel The Biggest Con.  

It is politically incorrect to say it but the truth is that the head of the CIA, John Brennan, is alleged to be a Muslim, as is Obama’s top aide, Valerie Jarrette, but not because of whatever religion may be involved for them. I believe Islam is a cult, not a religion, and therefore distrust the Islamic movement (caliphate) centered on ruling the world and killing “infidels” (especially Christians/Americans) and Jews.  Trump could feel the same way. The “Cairo Massacre” in Cairo, Egypt, on 12 December is instructive. The homicide/suicide bomber blew up a Catholic church and killed at least 25.  

It doesn’t help that FBI Director Comey and Attorney General Lynch, after Comey outlined an airtight case against Hillary Clinton, while She was State Secretary, on the bases of flagrant negligence allowing any hacker to access the nation’s secrets and indisputable perjury concerning same, brought no charges of any kind against her.  Under oath himself, Comey indicated her perjury in a Congressional hearing.  

So…it’s not surprising that Trump might view any of Obama-controlled agencies as objects of suspicion and even distrust, especially those that involve national security and law-enforcement, Smerconish’s insistence otherwise notwithstanding. When he takes office, the taint of Obama, Jarrette, Lynch, Brennan and perhaps Comey will be gone. Trump has already picked a CIA chief, national security adviser, defense secretary and attorney general and will then have confidence in what he hears. National Security Adviser Susan Rice (remember the lies she told five networks regarding the Benghazi Massacre) will also be gone, thus ridding the nation of incompetence and outright corruption in the highest offices.

The vote has displeased the progressives (Hillary's term, not just democrats anymore) so the effort is now to somehow invalidate an election Constitutionally conducted by claiming its outcome was determined not by Americans but by Putin, though there is absolutely no proof offered to that effect. Weird but true!

Ironically, even if some electors betrayed their trust on 19 December when the votes of the electors are counted, the election would be decided in the House, which is by a substantial margin republican.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Flawed Election Explanation

In an op-ed in the Lexington, Ky., Herald-Leader of 27 November, former newspaperman Al Smith attempted to explain why democrat Representative Martha Jane King of Logan County was defeated in the recent election, citing the usual things like being outspent (those evil Koch brothers and their Pacs) and spurious advertising showing her pictured with Hillary Clinton and blaming her for favoring most anything like abortion and same-sex marriages, things that rile a lot of folks and not just in Logan County.  

I don’t know how King feels about those or other subjects but I also don’t believe that sort of opposition ended her incumbency.  Courthouses in Kentucky and most state officials are still democrat, but the legislature and governorship have changed drastically, especially the House, which was not just overturned but turned upside-down (64-36, veto-proof) and made republican-run for the first time in nearly a hundred years.  The Senate has been republican for a long time.  

King became the victim of “Trumpism,” and it didn’t help her chances that Clinton’s abundantly transparent CQ (corruption-quota), with Trump using the term “Crooked Hillary” to good advantage, was divulged gradually all through the campaign.  Democrats were thrown out of state legislatures nationwide.  Guilt by association is a killer. Nationally, Clinton had avowed to continue Obama's tortured management, so the vote was also a referendum on the president.  

King lost her seat by a two-to-one margin, a landslide, just as Clinton lost the electoral college by a landslide 306-232.  Apparently, only one county out of 120 Kentucky counties (Jefferson) voted for Clinton.  In national elections, Kentucky has voted republican for years, at least tolerating the often-crooked democrat courthouse corruption, but trusting national issues only to republicans. Just one Kentucky member of Congress (from Jefferson County) is a democrat.  Nationally, only four states between the west coast democrat-cabal and the Northeast coast-cabal voted Trump, i.e., “flyover country,” where most of  Hillary’s “deplorables” live. The entire Southeast went for Trump.  

While Smith’s explanation for King’s defeat was flawed, he shed some light on the tolerated corruption of Kentucky politics, reminiscing about the days when “Doc” Beauchamp ran the state.  He might have mentioned that highway contractors sort of did, also.  Indeed, in recent memory, one can testify to the shenanigans and investigations/surveillances of former democrat governors and their administrations, as well as the legislatures.

Reaching back to the 70s, Governor (later Senator) Wendell Ford was indicted by a Grand Jury concerning an insurance scheme. His successor, Julian Carroll, was investigated by a Grand Jury in an insurance scam, after which his protege, Sonny Hunt, also a legislator as well as state democrat party chairman was convicted and did serious time. Carroll was under yet another federal investigation when he left office in 1979.

Carroll's successor, John Y. Brown, was investigated by a federal Grand Jury concerning a $1.3 million withdrawal from a bank (to pay gambling debts...maybe?) and was under surveillance concerning drug-trafficking, a cocaine-drug-smuggling ring operating in Lexington at the time. Governor Martha Layne Collins ran into a conflict of interest brouhaha over the gift of a $35,000 piano, whilst hubby Bill was convicted of extorting $1.1 million accruing to contributions from state contractors.

Her successor, Wallace Wilkinson, was investigated over numerous charges (remember the book sales) and a $418 million bankruptcy case. His successor, Brerton Jones, received illegally large contributions to his campaign from National Guard officers, who were later promoted or given government appointments, while the adjutant-general went to jail for 18 months or so. Jones's successor, Paul Patton, suffered a sexual harassment lawsuit by a woman with whom he had an affair and experienced both FBI and Ethics Commission probes.

More than a dozen legislators were convicted in the early 90s via an FBI sting (selling votes...remember BOPTROT-HUMANA) and the longest-serving House Speaker up to then, Don Blandford, was given 64 months in the Pen.

Yeah, politics are the damnedest in Kentucky. Al Smith knows and covered it.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Protesting Paranoiacs

One can only wonder what it would have been like in 2008 and 2012 if disappointed people vis-à-vis Obama’s election had taken to the streets like those disappointed about Trump’s election are doing in a few cities across the country.  What’s happening with these people furnishes a window into what the socialist-oriented think about this country.  

This is different from 2000, when the Supreme Court of Florida attempted to steal the election from George W. Bush.  That was an official, albeit illegal, action by a government, settled quickly by the Supreme Court of the U.S.  What’s happening now is a protest meaning nothing since it’s not an official undertaking by any group.  Hopefully, it will not eventuate in criminal activity but that possibility is real.   

If there had been a protest movement in 2000, the protesters would probably, as now, be largely black, teens and twenty-somethings.  This means disaffected ethnics and public school and university/college students in the main, another way of saying immature and ill-informed, especially in the universities, in most of which the faculties are far-left (progressivists) and prone to indoctrinate young minds with their socialist agendas.   

With the blessings of the current establishment figures in both federal and large-city governments, protesters have understandably been encouraged to make disruption of the freedoms of others as a tool to effect their agendas, the devil take the hindmost.  This was graphically illustrated by Obama’s DOJ (AG Holder) when it went after an innocent policeman in Ferguson, Missouri, a while back to try to wreck his life.  It was illustrated later when the Baltimore mayor indicated that protesters should have their “space” to do their thing such as attacking people and burning other people’s properties and/or destroying their businesses/livelihoods.   

This involves a third- or fourth-world mentality, to wit, that matters are settled in the streets and not at the ballot box.  It has been encouraged by Obama since it involves displacing one dictator with another, i.e., rule by a monarch.  Obama has repeatedly tried to govern by executive order, as a monarch would, disregarding the legislature and the courts despite the mandates of the U.S. Constitution.   

This is the socialistic approach favored by both Obama and Hillary Clinton, elitists who would hand the government over to a small band of oligarchs to work their will, gaining power and immense wealth, all at the expense of the little people.   Theirs is the something for nothing propaganda—the mythic level playing field—on which the government makes every decision, whether personal or institutional.  

The best example: Obamacare. This act was designed to fail at best or through ignorance at worst. Based on payments by insurance companies, which exist to make profits and not necessarily for public benefit, the pattern was to eventuate in single-payer mode, notwithstanding that Medicare couldn't even be managed by government and had to be turned over to insurance companies for its administration.  

MIT professor Jonathan Gruber, paid at least $400,000 for Obamacare-design, apologized before Congress for referencing the public as stupid, the notion being that the great unwashed would never catch-on to actual provisions, and he was right. In fact the democrats, who passed the legislation (no republican in House or Senate voted for it), didn't bother to read it but probably couldn't have understood it anyway.  

This may explain the plight of the protesters, who may actually believe the result of the election can somehow be overturned. This is tin-horn-dictator stuff. In Venezuela, street protests might work (or not) if they become violent enough, as has been seen in Muslim countries like Libya, Egypt, and Syria recently. In fact, Obama joined the protesters in Libya by siccing the U.S. Air Force on Qaddafi.  

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Teacher-Quota System Flawed

The latest gaffe of the Fayette Public School System, already dodging landmines for the last few years, is its insistence that it must do more to entice black and Latino teachers (Herald-Leader 31 October), their ethnicity apparently trumping their ability/experience. Caveat Alert: Notwithstanding the politically incorrect outcry of racism, this is madness.

The considered enticements include reduced apartment-rent, one-year gym-membership, and on-the-spot teaching contract, presumably meaning no vetting needed, just a teaching certificate. Reason: necessity to compete with other systems that offer more inducements, sort of like recruiting basketball players.

One can only wonder how Fayette teachers feel about this, especially those who have made significant sacrifices to satisfy requirements leading to greater proficiency, as well as non-ethnic applicants already deemed acceptable but waiting while the pigment-entitled pass them. Case-in-point: At the same time she became a Supreme Court justice, Justice Sotomayor was overturned by SCOTUS regarding her previous federal court decision favoring “reverse discrimination,” i.e., ruling that blacks bypass four more-qualified whites in fire-department promotions in a Connecticut city.

Ninety percent of Fayette teachers are white while 37.5% of students are black/Hispanic. About 90% of the UK basketball team (at least the ones who play in games) is black while the coach and 75% of the fans are white. So what! Ethnicity means absolutely nothing in either case.

The latest Prichard Report indicated that in order to achieve proper diversity among teachers the state would need to hire 6,882 black, Hispanic and teachers of other nationalities. The average teacher-salary in Kentucky, according to the Ky. Dept. of Education, is $52,618 ($58,385 in Lexington), meaning an additional outlay of some $400 million a year unless the white-teacher population is reduced by 6,882 teachers (5%) so political correctness can be achieved. How much sense does that make?

Supply obviously is a problem. Potential teachers must finish high school and college/university. In 2013, according to U.S. News & World Report (March 2016), 40.3% and 60.7% of black and white students, respectively, graduated college. The numbers graduating high school in 2012, according to the Huffington Post, were 69% and 86%, for blacks and whites, respectively. Hispanics came in at 73%. The pool for ethnic teachers is extremely small on just the basis of formal training.

Preparation is a problem. In order to teach, aspirants must pass a teacher-certification test. According to the Cincinnati Enquirer (April 2002), 36% of teacher-applicants at Kentucky State University (traditionally black enrolment) in Frankfort, passed that test, while the state average was 93% in the other state colleges/universities that year. That's deplorable though one hopes that improvement has been made since then, notwithstanding the constant turmoil at that school since 2002.

The test can be taken over and over until it is passed, and that's scary, as is the fact that until passing the aspirant may work as a substitute-teacher or in an emergency (whatever that would be). Students in the education dept. at KSU then were 60% and 40% black and white, respectively. When 74% of any class flunks its main standard of efficiency, the notion of a quota-system is absolutely off the charts when hiring takes place vis-a-vis preparation in an institution with that record. There's little reason to think much has changed at KSU.

Satisfying quotas, as Sotomayor might agree now (as well as UK coach Calipari), degrades the matter in question, especially the vital one of education. The Fayette system should remember this, no matter what political correctness dictates. Preoccupying itself with the hiring of potentially inferior teachers is unacceptable, just as basketball scholarships for white guys who can't jump.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

RIGGED

Democrats and even smart people have been horrified over Trump’s contention that the election process has been rigged from the start, but now, as Obama’s mentor, the Rev.  Dr. Jeremiah (God damn America) Wright, might say, the chickens have come home to roost.  Every entity from the DNC to Clinton’s governmental protectors is involved.

It started perhaps with the grand introduction at the Democrat Convention of “Gold Star Father” Khan, who waved a copy of the U.S. Constitution in the air and apparently tried to blame the death of his son, an army captain, on Trump, who had nothing to do with the war in which he was killed, but for which Hillary Clinton voted.  

Khan didn’t just volunteer and one can only wonder how much he was paid for that performance.  He has his own law firm, designed for leveraging the immigration of Muslims with the right amount of money into the U.S.  He also has worked with the law firm that represents Saudi Arabia in this country and does work for the Clintons, including their taxes.   

Saudi Arabia has contributed $10 - $25 million to the Clinton Foundation, which is perhaps the perfect place for laundering payouts, not to mention a vehicle for enhancing the Clinton personal wealth.  The leaked emails currently in circulation have proven how extensive that operation was/is.  As State Secretary, when much if not most of the groundwork was laid for “special privileges” for some individuals and countries—resulting in great current and potential wealth for the Clintons—Hillary rigged the actual U.S. government.

Some of the most definitive rigging occurred vis-a-vis the DNC (Podesta, Schultz) and its concentrated attempt to deep-six Bernie Sanders from the get-go, thus giving Hillary an easy, inexpensive road to the nomination. DNC Head Honcho Schultz was fired from the DNC, of course (pressure too great considering her dirty work), in favor of interim chairperson Brazile, not much of an improvement. Podesta remains a top Hillary gofer/rigger, however. He tries to make her appear honest but is mostly unsuccessful, perhaps because they are just alike—LIARS.

The most apparent rigging was the refusal of the DOJ (Lynch/Comey) to indict Hillary account her personal/illegal servers on which government business was carried out and her obvious and well-documented (print/TV) perjury, lying under oath in a congressional hearing corroborated by FBI Director Comey during a later hearing in the same milieu in which he was under oath. The private meeting of Bill Clinton with Attorney General Lynch (besides being absolutely stupid) just prior to Comey's disastrous press conference clearing Hillary is instructive in how to strike a deal. That's called rigging.

Evidence of this rigging has now been reinforced by the new communication of Comey with the Congress referring to the re-opening of the investigation into Hillary's misdeeds, which are many, varied and ugly, this time having to do with tweets and no telling what else concerning Clinton's top aide, a Muslim lady, and her husband, a creepy former congressman communicating on the Internet with underage girls. Imagine the stuff in government, whether classified or not, being in the hands of people like that, a Muslim and a pervert! According to the FBI, Weiner's laptop includes 650,000 more emails. Probably, a fifth-grader could hack it, let alone a foreign government.

And then there are all the gals who came out from under the rocks to accuse Trump of sexual assault/harassment years ago, without any proof, of course. One can only wonder how much they were paid. To think, like Khan, they would do that for nothing is absurd. They don't have to worry about being sued by Trump since he is a public figure and legally susceptible to any accusation. Rigging! Clinton campaign-money is in deep pockets. A million per gal would be chicken-feed.

A bright spot: Perhaps the credibility of the FBI has been restored. It was probably the only government agency still accounted as honest until Comey was left twisting in the wind by Lynch after her meeting with Bubba.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

To the Ground

It was his aim as it had been for years
To bring the USA down to its knees
As he applied the KGB's worst fears
To entities considered enemies.
No longer Soviet but just a state,
His Russia did not rule enough of world
But he intended to rejuvenate
The old state with its flag worldwide unfurled.
To do that meant the USA's downfall
But doing that was not like third-world chase,
No...militarily was not the call,
Implosion would this greatest threat erase.
But causing this main threat to just rot-out
Would seem impossible until he thought
Just how the USA had come about...
Discovered then the answer that he sought.
Contrary to his nation's origin,
At least since Soviet empire's demise,
The USA as such was to begin
When faith in God the pilgrims would devise.
He recognized that faith to be kept whole
Depended on the churches for its health
And so he schemed to prostitute their role
Through infiltration...taking them by stealth.
But his advisers pointed out the fact
That U.S. churches already were slack
In holding sacred what God would exact
In having strength enough to guard their back.
Not that God needed them for any cause
But that for Christians' good they should not slight
Commandments found in holy writ...its laws
For morals and for military might.
Advisers pointed out how church was weak,
Its worship often known as Christian Rock,
With “praise-teams” mouthing that all now should seek
God's heaven ere the twelve on earth-bound clock,
That churches had forsaken Christ as Lord
And in his place enthroned diversity,
That only “love” must count, never the sword,
Protecting every soul from enmity,
Not that this made much sense, advisers said,
Since there are entities that all should hate,
But many claimed the “red better than dead”
As their philosophy...thus him elate,
That he should have no doubt of U.S. rot
Because the churches – hellbent – lead the way,
Indeed, allowed two men to tie the knot –
An in-your-face affront to God's pure way.
The church, advisers said, performed charades,
It stood for nothing, fell for what would sell,
Becoming more like weird “gay-pride” parades
While dragging nation down to gates of hell.
He was convinced that, though not in his time,
...Although the church's decadence was quite profound...
That as the church forsook its sacred rhyme
The U.S. soon would be brought to the ground.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Columnist & Christian-Persecution

Eblen pooh-poohs Governor Bevin

Lexington Herald-Leader columnist Tom Eblen (18 September) latched onto what he called “[Ky. Governor] Bevin’s ramblings about the need to ‘shed blood’ if Clinton is elected” for one of his periodic rants concerning the evils of republicans/evangelicals. The context involved a tirade against such elements as Limbaugh and Fox News, crediting them with turning the GOP into a “white nationalist party” as if the Democrat Party isn’t at least 75% white, nationalist or not.   

He actually was citing Hillary’s “basket of deplorables” as the current repubs – folks who are “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic” and irredeemably so…hopeless cases.  Despite the fact that everyone besides Eblen knows Bevin was not talking about an imminent bloodletting, it is instructive to see from where Bevin could be coming, i.e., a look at both current events and history. The major thrust of the column concerned persecution of Christians.  

The media, including the uber-liberal H-L, has constantly related accounts for years regarding the beheading of Christians in Muslim-governed countries, unarmed people slaughtered like animals, as over the recent weekend in NYC and Elizabeth, N.J., not to mention 9/11.  Given a modicum of power, as is happening in Europe, Islamists would do the same in the U.S., their terrorist tactics just the beginning.  Clinton has announced that hundreds of thousands of Muslims would be admitted to the U.S. in her presidency.  That’s not a “Bevin rambling,” just a truth. The bloodshed of Christians is already in the U.S.  

The lessons of history are instructive.  Those Christians who withstood the rigors of the “Mayflower episode” in the early seventeenth century were fleeing Great Britain account religious persecution occasioned by their refusal to pay homage to the official Church of England.  That’s not even ancient history.  In that day, Christians were burned alive at the stake or hanged.

To teach Mayflower Christians a lesson, Britain later deployed the strongest navy and at least the second strongest army in the world, occasioning bloodshed on a grand scale…again, not even ancient history.  The colonists/Christians paid dearly in blood and treasure in that eight-years of hell in the 1780s.  Jesus told his disciples to arm themselves with swords, and that’s precisely what the George Washington-era Christians did to save this nation then and also in 1812-15.  

Flash forward to 1861.  To save the nation, Lincoln and citizens acting largely upon Christian convictions (observing Christian beliefs as initiating and constructing the Constitution) repelled those who would split the nation and in the process freed the slaves.  The cost was incomprehensible—an average of 340 deaths of mostly white males per day…for four long years.  This was a bloody Christian-persecution matter of only 150 or so years ago.

Eblen's approach to blood/guts motivation as a less sanguinary but equally vindictive matter was seen ten years ago when he as then-H-L managing editor in collusion with the editorial folks attempted to destroy the University of the Cumberlands, which had expelled a homosexual student not for his orientation but for “outing” it, actually flaunting it in social media along with pictures of men kissing each other. The private school had that right, as noted in its student-handbook, and as a “Christian” matter as outlined in scripture. At the time, neither the military nor the Boy Scouts allowed homosexuals to serve as a practical matter.

On seven days of a nine-day period, the paper made the subject front-page-above-the-fold stuff, positioned in the area devoted to the most important news of the world. In addition to the huge front-page segments, pictures, and headlines, the paper dedicated a huge plethora of columns and pictures to the subject on its interior pages, all in the front (A) “news, editorial, op-ed” sections.

Eblen furnished the date/information concerning a statewide protest to be held at UC, Williamsburg, Ky. On the evening TV- news accounts of that “protest effort,” there seemed to be more interviews with law enforcement people standing around sort of slack-jawed obviously wondering why they were there than with the participants, maybe 35. The UC Christians were persecuted by Eblen and his gang...or so they thought.

The same thing happened four years ago when the paper attempted to bankrupt Hands On Originals, a local shirt/sweater-printing company that refused, as a Christian-beliefs matter, to produce T-shirts for the local LGBTQ organization. The paper even advertised a grand “protest” downtown nowhere near the HOO location that was virtually ignored by the citizens. There was a lawsuit, of course, and the Court ruled in favor of HOO.

So...there's Bevin's “rambling” and Eblen's “rambling,” the former a credible warning, the latter a mean-spirited bit of hypocritical hogwash.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Election-year Limericks

Election campaigns can be such a bore, especially the quadrennial ones vis-a-vis the presidency, when lies seem most often to supplant truths as part of the standard to use in determining trust or distrust of the candidates. Observing the lowly limerick might be a lighthearted respite from the grind of listening to boring speeches filled with hyperbole and promises, most of which will never be kept after a winner takes office and discovers he must engage with both the Congress and the Courts to get anything done...or undone. A few limericks:

The Donald called her “Crooked Hillary,”
To whom the truth was her worst enemy
**She dodged truth like the plague
**As something far too vague
To trust it to the dumb citizenry.

He said he would make U.S. great again
As if right then it was as black as sin
**But little did he know
**All candidates thus so
Have always said the same...rarely begin.

Islamaphobes she said the Donald drew
To all his rallies...wicked through and through –
**Of Muslims she thought well
**Despite their wish of hell
For her and all her apparatchik-crew.

Trump's crowds were huge, just like his hair,
Protesters in it were not rare
**They tried to shut him down,
**The greatest show in town,
But quickly given quite a scare.

The Donald said McCain was no hero,
That people who got caught were kinda slow,
**But ere the votes cause fact
**Those words he must retract
As nothing more than hot air his to blow.

She said the Donald would be dangerous,
Would start a war account a simple fuss,
**He said she was too weak
**To give ISIS a tweak,
Much less a blow to bring on quietus.

She said Trump would protect his rhyming part
If ever Putin said he was not smart,
**Trump said that Clinton lied
**From morn till night betide,
And for the working poor she had no heart.

A government of Trump would just be rump
Opponents said in speeches on the stump,
**Aides running it each day
**With Trump always away
Just making deals more cash to to Trump to pump.

She said that Trump and Putin had conspired!
To hack both of her servers they had hired
**A fifth-grade prodigy
**Who had no tech degree
And so her own experts she quickly fired.

Bad vibes is what the Hill said Bernie had...
Though not admitting it this made her mad
**She said it was her turn
**Amid near meltdown burn,
She said old Bern was chauvinistic cad.

Hillary said she regretted she said
Half Trump's supporters deplored and head-dead,
**Percent eighty-nine
**She said would be fine...
The Donald just laughed...which made her see red.

Tisket-a-tasket Donald's weird basket
Holding some cases Clinton called basket,
**With xenophobes piled there
**And racists compiled there,
Donald just smiled there—she blew a gasket!

She said her basement server was okay,
But F-B-I director said no way,
**So then she blamed poor Powell,
**Who put up raucous howl,
From disbelief, then, no one could she sway.

She said she never, ever told a lie
But mentioned sad Benghazi with a sigh,
**She said what now the difference...
**Protesters simply jumped a fence...
And wielding signs bashed only four to die.

The Donald said illegals had to go,
That he would chase them down quite to-and-fro
**As if he really could
**Or even that he would
Since millions of them help this country grow.

Trump said Obama was not native-born,
That Hillary all truth would just suborn,
**Odd couple they had formed
**And government deformed...
Throughout the world invited naught but scorn.

She claimed her server was for privacy,
Her e-mails not for everyone to see,
**Too bad she just forgot
**That e-mails never rot,
To all the world top-secrets now are free.

Some citizens she called deplorable,
By contrast said she was adorable...
**To vote republican
**Meant brain that needed scan,
Assuming one be found explorable.

Some said she lacked lucidity
While others charged stupidity
**But all agreed Hill knew
**Already whom to screw –
The Sanders-gang unceasingly.

The Clintonite was said to be ahead,
She claimed her prime opponent's head was dead,
**Her charge—he lacked experience
**That coupled with a brain so dense
Meant USA was doomed if by him led.

As secretary of the State
And public figure quite sedate,
**A million miles she flew,
**Said nothing that was true...
With snickers round the world her fate.

He said he would construct a southern wall,
That Mexico would ante for it all,
**But Mexicans said, “Whoa,
**To pay we will forgo,”
Insisted that the Donald would install.

Broadcasted live on C-Span—perjury,
Caught under oath with falsehood—Hillary,
**She lied there in Congress,
**With charges no progress,
Loretta Lynching not—Hillary free!

For years she longed to be the president,
She said a woman's turn was evident,
**But basement server sank her,
**Erased e-mails betrayed her,
While twisting in the wind she wailed lament.

With braggadocio the Donald speaks
And talks of all the wonders that he wreaks,
**But he misspoke badly,
**Punctured his pride sadly,
His word about McCain with venom reeks.

The N-C-A-A cut N-C right out
Since transgender guys could not hang about
**In womens' restrooms where
**No urinals found there...
Ordered they go where their sex not in doubt.

Powell's e-mail hacker brought light to payback
To Clinton, who caused him unwelcome flack
**He said she was not nice,
**Had greed as profound vice...
With Trump a disgrace, he cut them no slack.

A basket of deplorable
With sanity improbable,
**She said supported Trump,
**Their brains a solid lump
That constitutes insoluble.

The homophobes, said Hillary,
Are Trump supporters, hatefully,
**They are deplorable,
**Are not charitable,
Do not observe diversity.

Yeah...I know – apologies! And so it goes.
Jim Clark