Carney Slinks Away

          I shouldn’t kick a man when he’s down.  But in this case I will.

          No, I’m not talking about Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki.  The man was incompetent and paid the price for his incompetence.  But he was an honorable man.  He served his country admirably as a military officer and doesn’t deserve further humiliation.
          Not so for Jay Carney.  The Minister of Propaganda, a man called a professional liar for hire, is resigning.  Except perhaps for his boss, President Obama, nobody is calling him an honorable man.
          Some would say that Jay Carney was only doing his job.  But what kind of job calls for bending the truth, covering-up facts, and just plain lying to protect his boss?  If President Obama was the Liar-in-Chief, Jay Carney was his echo, his abettor.  When he first began his stint as Press Secretary, the Washington press corps gave him a pass; no one asked him tough questions.  Nobody pinned him down when scandal after scandal broke and he covered for the lies coming from the White House: Obama’s false promises on health care, the phony Benghazi video story, the denial of corruption in the IRS, the claim that the president only found out about the VA scandal by reading the newspapers. 
          This last one is what did Carney in.  In the face of clear, recorded evidence ot the president’s knowledge of VA problems from the day he took office, Carney insisted his boss didn’t know.  The press corps had had enough and hammered Carney mercilessly.  Finally, he’d had enough, too.  He resigned with his record of shameless mendacity hanging from his neck.
          Kimberly Strassel on Fox News Sunday put her finger on the corrosive culture in the White House.  She said, “You almost have to wonder if there is a scandal manual in the top drawer of the president’s desk. It isn’t just the ‘I heard it from the media.’  There [are] five steps the administration keeps repeating every time a scandal comes up.  Step one is, well, I didn’t know about it.  Step two is to express great outrage.  When that doesn’t work, step three is to fire some low-level bureaucrat. The study comes next.  Then…we’re going to wait to see what the I.G. [Inspector General] says or the FBI investigation…And then… six months later it’s either A: Done, or B: all the results are partisan, pushed by the Republicans…When you listen to some of his [the president’s] press conferences, they’re eerie.   It’s the exact same language every time.”  And there’s Jay Carney right there next to the president, ready to parrot those same lines, word for word.
          Jay Carney has been perhaps the most visible pawn in the president’s phalanx of prevaricators.  In an administration beset over and over by accusations of incompetence and scandal, Carney’s famous smirk became the symbol of this administration’s disdain
for honest reporting, his words the expression of the president’s disrespect for the truth.  Jay Carney’s tenure as Press Secretary marks a period when the leaders of this government lost two things they must demonstrate to earn and keep our confidence and our respect: moral leadership and personal integrity.  
          That is not a legacy to be proud of.

NGA Tournament Update

          We are now less than a month away from the start of the first professional golf tournament ever played in Perquimans County.  Little Hertford will soon be able to boast of being not only the hometown of Jim “Catfish” Hunter, but also the home of the Biggs Cadillac-Buick-GMC Classic.  The NGA professional golf tour is about to put Hertford on America’s sports map.

          On June 23^rd, professional golfers will arrive for their first practice round on Albemarle Plantation’s Sound Golf Links.  These stars of the future will be challenged by a course that demands precision on the fairways and finely honed skills on the greens.  They will discover that short does not necessarily mean easy.
          The first round of the tournament actually begins on Thursday, June 26^th, but it will be preceded by fun events on Tuesday like the Shootout and the Long Drive contest, and the Pro-Am on Wednesday. 
          The Pro-Am and the minor sponsorships are especially important to this community, because these sponsorships by individuals and local businesses will add significantly to the proceeds of the week-long event.  Combined with major sponsorships by Biggs, FedEx, Vidant Chowan, and Griggs Lumber in conjunction with Albemarle Preferred Builders, they now exceed $60,000 in projected revenues.  As previously announced, net proceeds from the week-long event will be donated to the Albemarle Food Bank.
          Even though sponsorships to date have already assured the financial success of this tournament, there is room for more.  Businesses in Perquimans County and surrounding areas who have not yet responded to solicitations are encouraged to take advantage of this unique fund-raising opportunity.  Having more sponsors means a greater contribution to a worthy cause.
          Finally, for county residents who would like to come as spectators on one of the tournament days from Thursday to Sunday, June 26-29, tickets are available for $5 at Woodard’s Pharmacy and the Sound Golf Links pro shop.   When it comes to feeding the hungry, every little bit counts.

The Shoes Fit

                    “If the shoe fits, wear it,” says the old adage.  Bret Stephens, in writing about the foreign policy of the President and his Secretary of State, recalled that the great German poet Goethe once wrote that nothing is worse than aggressive stupidity, but that pompous impotence surely comes in second place.  These two shoes are a perfect fit for Barack Obama and John Kerry.  They have been wearing them in Syria, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Libya, Afghanistan, and now Ukraine. 

                    Stern warnings in opposition to Russian incursions take the form of sanctions that produce derision and laughter.  A response to a request for arms results in a shipment of meals-ready-to-eat (MREs).  Meek, ineffective, and yes, laughable.  That’s American foreign policy these days. 
                    Let’s move on to Nigeria where the Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram has been terrorizing Christian communities since 2009.  The FBI, the CIA, and members of Congress repeatedly asked the State Department to treat the group as terrorists, but Hillary Clinton refused, apparently believing that appeasing terrorists promotes peace and stability.  And let’s not mention that Boko Haram has ties to al Qaida, because that would run counter to the president’s claim that al Qaida is on the run.
                    When Boko Haram slaughtered hundreds in Gamboru Ngala and later incinerated 59 boys in an attack on a Christian Easter service, there was silence in Washington.  But when the terrorists kidnapped 300 girls and threatened to sell them into slavery, Hillary finally spoke up and called the action abominable and criminal.  Michelle Obama then jumped into the fray with a Tweet of herself holding a poster that read “# Bring Back Our Girls.”  So that’s it.  We now place our foreign policy in the hands of a hypocritical former Secretary of State and an outraged First Lady.  That will surely make Boko Haram quake in fear.
                    So what should we do about Boko Haram?  Should we send forces into Nigeria to rescue those girls?  Our intrepid Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel takes the cue and says, “We’re going to bring to bear every asset we can possibly use to help the Nigerian government” ….except put boots on the ground.  What a show of force!  Oh, but we’ll send personnel (presumably unarmed) to help locate the girls.  Now there’s a bold plan!
                    To aggressive stupidity and pompous impotence, we must now add to our foreign policy fearsome outrage and feckless bravado.   When you send those scouts into the jungle, Chuck, make sure they take a lot of MREs with them.

 

 

Dems Fear Benghazi

          The more Democrats say that Benghazi is old news, a dead issue, a red herring, etc., the more it appears that they fear the truth. 

          From the beginning, the Administration’s response to inquiries on Benghazi has been to delay, obstruct, deny, lie, and cover up.  At last a memo, withheld from investigating committees for a year and a half, has surfaced to establish that the White House was complicit in prepping Susan Rice to make false statements on five Sunday talk shows following the murders of four Americans in Benghazi.  Under direction from Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes, she blamed the attacks on a protest against a video.  For House Speaker Boehner that was the last straw; he had no choice but to appoint a Select Investigating Committee to cut through the lies and get to the truth.

          Among those most fearful of the truth is Hillary Clinton, the Democrats’ presumptive candidate for President in 2016.  She will have to answer for the lack of security before the attacks; she will have to confirm or deny that she and the President were the ones who came up with the “blame the video” idea; she will have to explain why she continued to lie to the public and to the families of the deceased when she knew the video story was false.  “What difference, at this point, does it make?” is not an answer the Committee will accept.

          Hillary Clinton will not have an easy sail to the presidency.  Challengers will help voters recall Clinton White House years filled with scandals that she blamed on a “vast right wing conspiracy.”  They will bring up Whitewater, missing records, mysterious deaths, bimbo eruptions (Monica Lewinsky is already back in the news), cattle futures, and her failed health care proposal.  They will point to her dismal record as head of the State Department.  And they will point to the hypocrisy of her rants about the Boko Haram kidnappings when she was the one who refused repeatedly to place Boko Haram on the terrorist watch list. 

          Columnist William Safire once called Hillary Clinton a congenital liar.   She may not be a match for Barack Obama in that department, but I’m willing to bet she’ll be at her very best mendacious self when the questions start coming.  Stay tuned.

              

Marshall, Jesus, and Obama on Taxes

          In 1819, Chief Justice John Marshall wrote, “An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy, because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation.”  Almost 200 years later these words still resonate.

          Destructive taxation is nothing new.  In Jesus’ day, Roman taxes on the people of Palestine were so oppressive, they caused repeated Jewish uprisings.  The subject of taxation comes up again and again in the Gospels.  Jesus did not advocate rebellion (“Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s…”), but when his following grew, it caught the attention of the Romans.  Not willing to see this popular movement grow into a revolt, they killed him.

          Jesus was a man of peace, but he understood very well the consequences of confiscatory taxation.  The line “Give us this day our daily bread” in the Lord’s Prayer is a direct reference to the consequence of excessive taxation.  A farmer who was no longer able to pay his taxes lost his farm and therefore his ability to make daily bread for his family.  The many poor who had been driven from their homes by the Romans knew exactly what Jesus was talking about.

          In this Land of Plenty are we approaching the limit beyond which we can no longer bear taxation?  The Romans taxed their subjects to fund their military exploits.  One might argue that we do the same in this country, but a marked decrease in defense spending advocated by this administration defuses that argument.  Rather, the purpose of increased taxation in the United States is the funding of out-of-control spending programs it cannot afford.  ObamaCare, with its vast array of subsidies and mandates, plus a projected trillion dollars added to the federal deficit in the next decade, is the latest and most egregious example of this policy.  At the heart of it is a socialist ideology that equates justice with the redistribution of wealth, but is in fact a means to increase government control over an increasingly dependent populace.     

          Elections are the constitutionally prescribed means of reversing the tax and spend policies of Progressives in the Senate and the White House.  Conservatives see the elections in November as their best chance to regain the Senate.  But we will still have to contend with Obama and his extra-constitutional executive powers and his regulatory juggernaut for another three years.

          Can we wait that long?  Americans have not revolted against tyrannical government in over 200 years.  But history has a way of repeating itself.  Before we declared our independence from Britain in 1776, we had the Sons of Liberty and the Boston Tea Party in 1773.  Before the presidential elections of 2016 we have a rancher backed by gun-toting supporters facing down federal agents over grazing rights in Nevada.  The King of England sent troops to occupy Boston.  Will the monarch in Washington send the military to suppress the new freedom fighters in Nevada?

Athletes and Students

          In Vermont, the highest paid public employee is the hockey coach.  In 26 other states, the highest paid is the football coach.  In baseball, two major league teams have four players pulling in over $20 million each for 2014; the Los Angeles Dodgers alone have a payroll of $235,295,000; Alex Rodriguez in his last full season (2012) made $32 million, an average of $253,968 per hit.  By comparison, Kobe Bryant in that year earned $28 million or $37,940 per basket, and Payton Manning at $20 million cashed in $600,000 per touchdown.

          To state the obvious, there is a lot of money to be made in sports.  But the mega bucks go only to the top tier.  For every college coach making a million dollars, there are a hundred who toil for peanuts.  For every baseball millionaire there are hundreds hoping to make it out of the minor leagues while riding buses and living on meager meal allowances.  There are legions of kids honing their skills on playground basketball courts who will never achieve their dream of being among NBA players who average $5.15 million a year.

          There is nothing wrong with dreaming of making it big.  Sports is one way, but I would argue that chances of reaching millionaire status are not much better than the odds of winning a state lottery.  In fact, sports stars account for only a tiny portion of the famous 1% at the top of the earnings heap. 

          The value of sports, for me, lies in ways not measured by dollar signs.  As a young man I played them all: baseball, football, basketball, hockey, even tennis.  Because I was short, slow, and not very strong, I discovered early on that I had no future as an athlete.   But that didn’t prevent me from learning the value of competition, teamwork, and sportsmanship.  And because I seldom found myself on the winning side, I also learned to appreciate the value of success and the opportunity to achieve it. 

          In many ways the sports arena is like the classroom.  Like in sports, not everyone can rise to the top of the class; few earn PHDs.  But unlike sports, where the pyramid is very narrow at the top, the classroom can provide every student the knowledge and skills that will open up opportunities in any number of fields.  Every kid with a proper education can become good at something and enjoy a measure of success in life. 

          Sadly, we have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, too many young people these days spurn education.  Having disdained the opportunity of acquiring knowledge and skills, they leave school with no hope for the future, no aspirations for success, and no chance of ever becoming a productive member of society.  In this Land of Opportunity, there is no greater tragedy.

A bunch of Shameless Liars

               The mendacity of this administration and its sycophants in Congress knows no bounds, nor does its hypocrisy.  And both are motivated by politics.

               Take just one small example.  On April 4^th President Obama issued another of his famous executive orders to “make sure” (a favorite expression of his that masquerades as leadership) that women get paid the same as men when working in comparable jobs.  The announcement did not mention that women working in the White House have been getting paid up to 18% less than men for years.  There may be legitimate reasons for this disparity, but they apply equally to the working population at large.  Actually, there was no need for Obama’s executive order, since pay discrimination based on sex was outlawed by the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act that he signed into law in 2009.  So why the need for the executive order?  Politics, pure and simple: the Democrats need to shore up their base for the upcoming elections, and anything that may sway women voters is good politics.

               Earlier this month we got a much bigger example of political mendacity when we heard from Mike Morrell, a key witness in the Benghazi affair.   We now know that Mr. Morrell, who was the acting director of the CIA at the time of the Benghazi murders, is the one who changed the talking points that Susan Rice used to blame the Benghazi attacks on a spontaneous reaction to an anti-Islamic video.  He also excised from the talking points the mention of al Qaida’s involvement at a time when President Obama was taking credit for al Qaida’s downfall.  It is now clear that Morrell, who knew the truth about the assault, crafted his bald-faced lies to protect the president who was facing re-election. 

               Curiously, it just so happens that when Morrell left the CIA, he went to work for Beacon Global Strategies, a think tank supporting Hillary Clinton. The former Secretary of State, we all remember, accepted responsibility for the lack of security at our Benghazi compound and also lied publicly and to the families of the deceased about the nature of the attacks.   But, according to her, “What difference does it make?”

               Mendacity and hypocrisy, not to mention cynicism, obfuscation, and imperial arrogance, have been the hallmark of this administration. These people are congenitally incapable of shame.