Jessie Jackson Doesn't Know Sh*t From Shineola

Please excuse this post’s title if it offends you, but I can’t think of a more appropriate phrase to use here. I’m usually not inclined to actually use profanity in my posting, although I do use references like “%$#*@” where you can mentally fill in the blank with your favorite curse word or words depending on the situation.

Further, I’m generally not inclined to make personal attacks on individuals, although I made a previous exception in Michael Tells Us Mo(o)re Than We Need To Know. I prefer to instead allow the individual’s own words and actions speak for themselves and let the proverbial chips fall where they may. The Internet has a long memory.

This morning I want to talk about the latest utterance from the gigantic mouth of the irrelevant, irreverent, Reverend Jessie Jackson. If you haven’t already noticed, placing yourself between the Reverend Jackson and a TV camera or radio microphone could be hazardous to your health.

Jackson seems to draw each and every breath for the purpose of getting his inane thoughts and words into newsprint, his bug-eyed face onto our television screens, and to advance the goals of his professional reverse-racist “shake-down” organization, Operation Rainbow/Push.

There are several crisis situations affecting the continent of Africa. Mostly they involve one group of Africans killing another group of Africans. The United Nations has been guilty of sitting on their hands for decades while millions of lives were lost. Jessie Jackson and the balance of the black so called “Racial Leaders” here in the United States have not uttered a single word in protest. Likewise, the mainstream media and national leaders of colors other than black or brown have remained mute on these genocides.

When it comes to the actions or in these situations, inactions, of the UN, no one seems to have a problem. UN good, US bad. The UN sits idly by while millions die, but God forbid that the US actually does something with the intention of saving some African lives and that it produces any un-foreseen side effects.

“The Rev. Jesse Jackson (news - web sites) is calling for a U.S. congressional investigation into a report that U.S. health officials were warned that research on nevirapine was flawed. The warning was withheld from the White House weeks before President Bush (news - web sites) announced a plan in 2002 to distribute the drug in Africa, The Associated Press reported this week.”

Here is a little fact that the Irreverent Mr. Jackson needs to understand—80% of the worldwide cases of AIDS are in sub-Saharan Africa. AIDS is ultimately fatal 100% of the time.

The drug in question, nevirapine, while still being in the “investigative stage” of deployment, has been shown to be 50% effective in preventing the transmission of the AIDS virus from the mother to newborn infants.

“Studies show that a single dose of nevirapine to an infected woman during labor and another dose to her newborn baby can reduce the chances of HIV transmission by up to 50 percent.”

Let me quantify this story for you in my own ever-accurate terms. A woman is HIV positive. Based on current medical therapy, the woman’s HIV infection ultimately will develop into AIDS, and AIDS ultimately allows her to develop some rare form of cancer, pneumonia, or other fatal condition.

In the mean time, the woman gets pregnant after contracting the HIV virus. By delivering a single dose of nevirapine to the woman during labor and a single dose to the newborn infant after delivery, the chance of transmission of the HIV virus is reduced by 50%. Instead of both the woman and her child dieing, at least half of the children survive to be killed by their fellow Africans and ignored by Jessie Jackson and the balance of the US “African American” population.

“In calling for the investigation, Jackson demanded that nevirapine no longer be distributed in Africa.”

By making this demand, Jessie Jackson is risking increasing the HIV infection rate of the infants born to HIV positive mother by 50%.

"This was not a thoughtful and reasonable decision, but a crime against humanity," he said Thursday in Chicago. "Research standards and drug quality that are unacceptable in the U.S. and other Western countries must never be pushed onto Africa."

And the complaint everyone is arguing about? There is some bureaucratic argument about the testing of the drug here in the US. The drug is proven effective, the moronic researchers are just having a turf war over the testing protocol. No one is saying the drug doesn’t work on the newborn kids, just that it limits the effectiveness of the future treatment of the child’s mother.

The choice here is to let the woman and her child face a guaranteed death from AIDS, or to give the child a 50% chance of being born free from the HIV virus while at the same time risking the possibility that the mother’s life cannot be extended to the theoretical maximum with future doses of nevirapine.

This is a fine line to be walking, but it seems to me that the use of the drug produces an acceptable benefit regardless of the risk to the mother. Regardless of what the American press and Jessie Jackson say, the African medical establishment wants continued access to the drug…

“Doctors working in the public health system, which serves the vast majority of South Africans, have privately expressed fears they will be pressured to stop using single-dose nevirapine for pregnant women before alternatives are available.”

"I'm of the view that we should use nevirapine till a better situation can be created," said Dr. Ashraf Coovadia, head of the pediatric HIV clinic at Johannesburg's Coronation Mother and Child Hospital. "To halt the program would cause damage to what we have already achieved."

Let’s face it folks, JESSIE JACKSON DOESN’T GIVE A TINKER’S DAMN ABOUT THESE AFRICANS—Jessie Jackson just sees an opportunity to get is ugly face into the news after being irrelevant and invisible during the presidential election cycle and to use this story to attack the US government and the Bush administration.

If everyone will just mail $5.00 to Jessie, he’ll shut the heck up and crawl back into his hole, waiting for another "perceived injustice" to occur so he can start blithering again.

“Hey Jessie, wanna buy some really good smelling shineola for use on those thousand dollar shoes you're wearing???”

I'm All Lathered Up

As I have mentioned earlier, one of my favorite blogs is written by the guys over at PowerLine. I started reading the writings of Hindrocket, The Big Trunk, and Deacon during the presidential campaign, about a month before they helped break the story about the forged CBS "Rathergate" documents on President Bush's Texas Air National Guard Service.

I'd like to say congrats to them because they just won as the Best Conservative Blog over at Wizbang's 2004 Web log awards contest.

These guys are a bunch of Minnesota Lawyers who happen to take their jobs and their blogs seriously. They've been nationally published and made appearances on Fox and the other networks, yet they also take the time to acknowledge their E-mails. I wrote them yesterday with a comment on one of their posts and they actually wrote me back and thanked me for my comments. They have to get hundreds if not thousands of E-mails, but they obviously remember where they come from and I was honored to hear back from them. Maybe one day I'll write something that they will reference on their blog...who knows?

I always take the time to respond to my readers comments also. I appreciate you taking the time to read my ranting and raving.

So come on folks, let me have it--I promise to be gentle.

Patience Is More Than A Virtue--It's A Weapon

Dr. Henry Kissinger, the gentleman that was President Richard Nixon’s Secretary of State back in the 1970’s, made a comment in his book, "Does America Need a Foreign Policy?," which changed the way that I think about world politics forever when I read it several years ago. Paraphrasing Dr. Kissinger, he stated “the Chinese government made political decisions based on the perspective of a civilization that is 3000 years old.”

Further, he pointed out that as a result of this millennia long history, the Chinese government and, by extension, their people think nothing of patiently waiting and watching geopolitical events that might take one hundred years or more to transpire. A time period such as this, from their political perspective, only represents the longevity of a few (three or at most four) generations of their despotic communist leaders. With their inherent strict control over education, religion, and the media, very little can and will change in China over what we here in the US consider to be a VERY long period of time. (Remember, the US is only 228 years old this year.)

In the US, one hundred years represents 25 election cycles for president. At the very least, 13 different men could be elected, assuming each was to serve the maximum of two four-year terms. Further, our presidents are elected from not one but from two or possibly three political parties representing in theory very different ideologies. The direction of the nation vacillates along in an ever-declining (some call it a spiral downward) direction away from the government envisioned by Adams, Franklin, and Jefferson.

Dr. Kissinger didn’t say it outright, but I believe that the Chinese think that they can defeat us without firing a single shot or launching a single nuclear warhead. They will instead just wait for us to implode politically. If they keep waiting, instead of “beating them,” our un(der)educated population and our liberal (read that socialistic or communistic) politicians will just keep on hammering away at the rest of us until they make our country “join them.”

In my earlier posting The Devils in the Details—Part II, I referenced the fact that China’s population is about 1,300,000,00, while the US population stands at 293,000,000. Over four Chinese for every one American. I suspect that if the truth were known, they are hungry for the freedoms that we take for granted. The average 18 year old Chinese man would die for the opportunity to move to the US, get a student loan, enroll in college, get a part time job, rent an apartment, buy a used car, and drink an imported beer or two every Friday night. He would also kick most of his fellow students asses when it comes to test scores and wouldn’t think of watching (or believing) what that unshaven sloth Michael Moore spews out in the media--telling us that the US is an evil, unfair place in which to live. “Sell that crappola somewhere else,” he would say.

As I also referenced in that post, if the Chinese government ever managed to allow the Chinese population to consume petroleum products at the same rate as all of us “Ugly Americans” manage to burn it in our SUV’s and water heaters, the Chinese could consume more than 80,000,000 barrels per day. That means that China could in theory use more oil each and every day than the quantity that is currently pumped out of the ground by every oil producer on the entire planet.

Forget about Iraq , Iran, Syria, North Korea, al Queda, al Quackka, al "whatever," and AIDS, for that matter—in another one hundred years the Chinese will still be waiting patently for us to screw up…if the US is even still on the world map by then.

What are you going to help me do about it?

Hey, Youse Guys...Have You Seen My Bomb??

From France, to Canada, and now to New Jersey.

Well folks, I hate to tell you, but the TSA yokels at Newark’s Liberty International Airport spotted, and then LOST, a fake bomb planted in luggage by their supervisors as a training exercise for screeners. And once again, in a style reminiscent of the French Airport Police, they couldn’t find the fake bomb once it insidiously slipped past them (probably while they were distracted strip searching someone’s wheelchair bound 99 year old grandmother.) As a result, the geniuses let the fake bomb get loaded on an airliner bound for Amsterdam.

What I want to know is, who are these idiots and who let them out from behind the counter at McDonalds? It was just last weekend that I was all riled up and demanding answers from the French and the Canadians as a result of them losing real explosives, security badges and uniforms. But nooooooo, not now…what can we possibly say? As a result of this little “incident,” how can we keep a straight face while challenging either country’s credentials and ability when it comes to airline security?

Tell me again…we put fake explosives in a suitcase at an airport and couldn’t find the bag before it was allowed to fly out of the country? They knew it was there and they couldn’t find it? Forget UPS or Fed-X, I say send your explosives by Delta and they have a better chance of getting there if this is any indication of our abilities.

Boy do I feel secure.

I think that, in order to level the playing field, they just aught to start letting everyone bring a gun and some explosives on board the airplane with them when they travel. They could even hand out prizes like “most original design,” and “most bang for your buck” and so on.

I guess, on a positive note, the good news is that 100% of the bombs on French and American flights in the last week have been of friendly origin.

I already feel safer, don’t you?

Coed...Schmoed...Get Over It...

I just keep on getting more insensitive and politically incorrect every day. Well, actually I’m NOT getting more insensitive, I just let a little more of my real thoughts and beliefs leak out of my head and onto the pages of “What I’d Like To Have Said” for your selective enjoyment or outrage. I guess you’ll have to be the judge each day, and today I’m probably going to piss a few people off.

The current topic is single sex educational institutes. When I attended Georgia Tech in the late 1970’s, our enrollment was seven men for every one woman. Since many of the women were enrolled in the college of management, I could actually go for days at a time without speaking to a woman unless she worked in a campus restaurant or was a professor. My parents seemed to think that I shouldn’t worry about it because I wasn’t in college to meet girls; I was there to get an education. The situation still had a “negative static pressure” (it sucked.)

It seems that the girls enrolled at Wells College in Aurora, New York are more than a little upset that the college has made the decision to admit men in their 2005 freshman class. Notice that I place emphasis on the word decision, the college wasn’t sued in court and tried in the media and in the court of public opinion and forced at gunpoint into admitting men. They did it for financial reasons.

The article states that “(a)ngry students staged a sit-in and took over the administration building for a week after the October decision. The Collegiate Cabinet called for a vote of no-confidence in the school's president. A group of alumnae started a petition to protest the change. Students and parents marched in a demonstration during Parents' Weekend.

Now they're in court.

Two students, freshman Lauren Searle-Lebel and sophomore Jennifer LaBarbera, filed a lawsuit to prevent Wells from accepting men until 2008, when both women will have graduated. A hearing is set for Thursday in Syracuse, 35 miles northeast of here.

The students declined to comment. Searle-Lebel's mother, Ellen Searle-Lebel, a 1973 Wells graduate, said her daughter “chose to go to a women's college … and was under the understanding that it was going to remain a women's college. It's pretty simple.”"

Railey Savage, 19, a sophomore from Freeville, N.Y., who helped organize the sit-in, says Wells is “populated by strong women who could be in leadership roles, who could be active members of their communities, who have found their voices. That's become really important to me, and I value and cherish it. And I want to keep it.””

I’m sure that, for the men enrolled at the Citadel and VMI in the early 1990’s, their all male corps of cadets, free from the sexual tensions and resulting impediments to learning that the presence of the opposite sex often presents, was important to them also. Unfortunately, the Federal court and a bunch of the US population saw things differently.

The lovely Miss Shannon Faulkner was used as a pawn of the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Organization of Lesbians, er…um…make that…Women to break down the 150 year old single gender educational doors of The Citadel in Charleston, SC in 1995. Once admitted after a two-year legal battle, she lasted less than a month because she was not qualified physically to meet the rigors imposed on the “knobs” by the Corps of Cadets. Of course, being a woman, an immediate exception to tradition was granted to her by the school. She was not forced to have her “knob” (head) shaved on the first day of indoctrination. Let’s just say things went downhill for Miss Shannon from there. So what was the %$&@* point?

The primary argument used against The Citadel and VMI (and, for that matter, practically every other all male organization like The Augusta National Golf Club) is that the exclusion of women by these institutes and organizations unfairly prevents them from enjoying the business, political, and professional networking that the male members enjoy. The accomplishments and success of the graduates of these all male institutes is somehow viewed as being not of their own making, but rather primarily the result of where the men chose to go to school or hit a golf ball.

In the end, the colleges lost their legal challenges because they both accepted partial state funding. The idea of setting up separate but equal all girl institutes was rejected as not providing a true “Citadel” or “VMI” experience. Shannon Faulkner apparently got her fill in just a few short weeks, but the damage was done. In the five years after her admission, 43 women were admitted to the Citadel, but only one graduated. Was this result because of discrimination, one might ask—or a basic incompatibility with the program?

Now back to little Wells College.

Wells College is facing declining enrollment and a resulting funding problem. Being a private school, they fortunately don’t take much in the way of state taxpayer funds. It also seems that their illustrious all female alumni base is either real selfish or else they are preoccupied with marching, protesting, holding sit-ins, or perhaps having babies and raising families after graduation. Regardless of the reasons, Wells College’s endowment funding is not up to meeting the financial expenses of running an all woman college in 2004. You do realize that a college is a business and, like any business, red ink is bad news?

By admitting men to their student body, Wells College is killing two birds with one proverbial stone. They are seeking to expand their female demographic base while at the same time increasing their shrinking enrollment—and you know what, ITS ALREADY WORKING. Their 2005 freshman class jumped to 170 from 109 this year. Only 25 men are included in that figure. As a result, there will be 46 more women on campus next fall, but only 25 men—poor henpecked bastards…

"But Wells President Lisa Marsh Ryerson says the choice for the college is coed or dead. The college is running a deficit and relying on its $54 million endowment to break even. If that continues, Wells will wither, Ryerson says. “The solution is to expand the audience.”

Currently, 64 colleges in the nation are all-women, down from 300 in the early 1970s. And three of those colleges are planning to admit men as undergraduates next fall — Lesley College in Cambridge, Mass., Immaculata Women's College outside Philadelphia and Wells. Only two colleges are all men: Hampden-Sydney in Virginia and Wabash in Indiana."

Waahh—there are ONLY 64 all-women schools left, an 80% reduction in 30 years. I wonder how many were forced to defend their admissions policies in court and only admit a bunch of “girly men” after they lost a class action lawsuit? What kind of man would want to pay to go to college so they can study whatever the hell they teach in a ‘woman’s studies” curriculum. Not many, I suspect. The most telling statistic is that there are only two all male schools left in the US. I bet that most of those fell by the wayside to lawsuits filed by feminists and other interlopers who were jealous of being excluded from the pool of successful male alumni.

I find it ironic that Wells College voluntarily decided to go coed. They might also try teaching something that would actually equip their new male graduates to earn a respectable living once they have endured four years of radical feminism. A quick review of the Academic Programs at Wells only includes a handful of undergrad majors (math, molecular biology, chemistry, physics, computer science) that would likely yield an ability to produce some cash after graduation. The rest are either useless or require further work at the masters or PHD level to get even a high school teaching job. What the hell would someone want to borrow money or ask their parents to pay for four years of college to study “Ethics” or “American Culture” for any way?

I’ve had it up to here (pointing to the top of my head) with “American Culture.” And good luck to all of you 25 guys hanging out with three or four hundred angry women next fall in Aurora, NY…you’re gonna need it.

(PS: I'm having trouble with my HTML code editing working between MS Word and Mozilla Firefox. Please let me know by commenting if your browser shows any funny code inserted in my text)

Governing Sports

I’m still in the process of picking up my jaw off of the floor, so give me a minute here.

Ok, I think I’ve somewhat recovered.

I just got through watching the rebroadcast of The Beltway Boys this morning on Fox News Channel and one of their closing comments amounted to “Congress shouldn’t pass a law about the problems with BCS College Football Bowl matchups…but they should prod them a little….” This follows on the heels of John McCain's and other's calls for congressional action regarding steroids in baseball.

Sit down and let me tell you something. THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT HAS NO BUSINESS GETTING INVOLVED IN COLLEGE FOOTBALL BOWLS. FURTHER, THEY NEED NOT GET INVOLVED WITH THE ISSUE OF STEROID USE IN MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL.

As far as I can tell, the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution say nothing about “life, liberty, and the pursuit of a $2 beer and really good hotdog at a totally fair ballgame…”

We’re talking about amateur (in name only) and profession sports here people. You know, grown (or nearly grown) men playing children’s games. So what if some individuals make more that the gross national product of Haiti and Cuba combined for a years worth of “work.” It is still A GAME we are talking about. I say let the fans vote with their feet and their wallets when it comes to these issues.

I missed three home football games at Georgia Tech between 1979 and 1998. It took a stay in the hospital to make me miss the Georgia/Georgia Tech game in 1991. I also had season basketball tickets for five years at great financial expense. I love my Ramblin’ Wreck and my Yellow Jackets, who just happen to be ranked number three in NCAA division I basketball right now. Still, I have made the decision in the past few years to move away from Atlanta and I haven’t been to a Tech football game since 1999 or a Tech basketball game since 1998. You see, my life's priorties changed.

I have gone through the same evolution when it comes to Braves baseball, Falcons football, Hawks basketball, and The Atlanta Thrashers Hockey team. While I’d gladly drive to Atlanta from St. Simons for mid-ice tickets to a Thrasher's hockey game, I only casually watch the other Atlanta “pro” teams and, in spite of the Braves 13 year division winning streak, I haven’t been to Turner field since 1999. I make the decisions, not the government. I just can’t get that excited about pro sports (college sports is another story…)

Baseball is facing a major issue with the steroid “scandal” and the potential of Barry Bonds upsetting Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron’s record next year. Once again the computers and humans behind the BCS college football ranking have let the fans down by not allowing match-ups that satisfy everyone. Poor Auburn Fans. I say WAAAAH, get over it!

Vote with your feet and your wallet. Don’t let the government do your talking for you. As long as the dollars are flowing, the seats are full, and the TV revenues are over flowing, the owners and players and hangers-on will keep on delivering a less than quality product and you get what you deserve as a result.

It’s just a game, people…

Zero Tolerence Equals Zero Intelligence

Over the past 40 or so years I have enjoyed watching movies, TV shows, and cartoons that portray unusual ways to cause bodily harm and death to your adversary. Now wait a minute. Don’t everybody be getting all excited and riled up when I make this admission, because it is not quite what it looks like on the surface.

You see, I’m not talking about really bad, blood and gore movies full of machine guns and explosions like “Scarface” or the “Rambo” movies. I’m talking about James Bond films, cartoons like “The Road Runner & Wyle E. Coyote, and the “Andy Griffith Show” featuring Mayberry’s Deputy Barney Fife.

Ian Flemming’s secret agent James bond always thrilled movie goers with the latest, greatest, often concealed, high-tech weapons that he had at his disposal for use in thwarting the designs of whatever maniacal madman might be trying to take over the world. Wyle E. Coyote could always buy a giant cannon or extra powerful slingshot from the latest ACME catalogue for use in his attempts to capture the Roadrunner. And finally, as everyone knows, Barney Fife had made his whole body into a weapon as a result of his correspondence course in Karate.

Then there is ten year old Porsche Brown of Philadelphia, a little girl that has single handedly managed to threaten the safety of each and every one of her fellow elementary school classmates. She accomplished this act by bringing a pair of 8” scissors to school in her backpack.

Little Miss Brown didn’t actually threaten a classmate by brandishing the scissors in a threatening manner in order to get arrested, handcuffed, and lead away from school in tears. Noooo, the teachers belatedly found the so-called “deadly weapon” in the little girls backpack while searching the children for some missing personal property stolen from a teacher’s desk. If Porsche had actually stabbed someone with her scissors or done an unauthorized haircut on one of her classmates, I could see getting a little worked up, but this is ridiculous. The article makes no mention of whether the missing items were ever found and what punishment was delivered to the culprit. They probably let him go with a warning…

I got to say it Folks. THIS “ZERO TOLERANCE” STUFF HAS GOTTEN ENTIRELY OUT OF HAND!! Teachers and school administrators alike have been allowed to replace intelligent thought and common sense with a ridiculous set of idiotic rules designed in theory to make schools safer. What they are doing instead is teaching kids living in a world full of shades of grey that every situation can be viewed on the basis of black and white, with no room for the application of good judgment or rational intelligent thought when considering any mitigating circumstances that might be present.

Under the guise of keeping drugs and weapons out of school, innocent items like toy guns, Tweety Bird key chains, souvenir 12” baseball bats, pencil sharpeners, and Advil tablets are being hysterically confiscated and the offending child whisked off of the school grounds to jail—much to the relief of the moronic government school imbeciles charged with supervising the process. They don’t have to consider and think any more, they just close their eyes and minds and recite the rules.

Many times, when the legal authorities drop the charges, the school responds by mandating even more severe penalties just to prove their point. In this case, the local police dropped the charges against Miss Brown, but the school still is trying to save face by having a hearing to determine when and if she can return to class. IDIOTS!

Under today’s rules, I wouldn’t have made it past the sixth grade considering some of the stunts I pulled. There would be a Fox News investigation and an episode of “60 Minutes” introducing me to the civilized world as a 12 year old “Hannibal Letcher.”

Here is my problem with “zero tolerance.” You can’t cover every possible situation that theoretically occurs, and you can’t by default eliminate every item that could be used as a weapon from the school ground. A kid could pin another kid on the ground and shove a mechanical pencil through his adversary’s nostril, into his brain, and fatally injure the victim. A big bully could in a matter of a few seconds beat another student unconscious with a metal lunchroom tray. Are we going to ban mechanical pencils and force the kids to eat off of paper plates in order to make our schools safer? I wonder what are they using these days to cut open the belly’s of the preserved frogs and worms handed out in biology class-- spoons and spatulas from the lunchroom? What are kids supposed to use to cut construction paper for class projects--a laser beam?

By the way, why isn’t paper considered a weapon since it can cause a paper cut? I’d like to see that one come up in court…..