Oklahoma recovering; Monsanto attacked by well-fed activists

President Obama visited Oklahoma to tour the tornado devastation. He paid tribute especially to the dedicated teachers at two destroyed schools in Moore who managed to save all but seven of their students. Oklahoma is in the middle of what some folks call “Tornado Alley” and they wonder why anyone would be crazy enough to want to live there. Well, it’s not that bad. I bet if you checked out all the houses and barns that are, say, 50 or more years old, not one in a hundred has been damaged by a tornado.

Our Columbus Dispatch printed an editorial cartoon that was unfair to Oklahoma Senator Inhofe by claiming he was against aid for victims of Hurricane Sandy but would like aid for the tornado victims. He (and fellow Senator Coburn) voted against the $60 Billion relief for Hurricane Sandy victims because only about $15 Billion was actually for the victims. If Congress decides to allocate a Billion dollars or so to Oklahoma tornado relief, Oklahoma folks will appreciate it. But if an extra 3 or 4 Billion gets tacked on to a so-called relief bill, Oklahoma will say, “Sorry, no thanks. We’ll just take care of ourselves.”

On Friday the President gave a speech to the country.  He asked us to forget about the IRS and Benghazi, forget about bugging the Fox and AP reporters, and instead celebrate the end of the war on terror. It’s over. Nothing left but small skirmishes.

That’s what he said. Right after the speech he got a call from England, “Sorry, Islamic terrorists just beheaded a man in London.” Then France called…  I guess Obama never heard the story Abraham Lincoln told, “If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have? Five? No, calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.”

I was invited to attend a “March on Monsanto” protest, but I didn’t go. It seems shortsighted to be against using plant genetics to produce more food with less water, less chemicals and less soil loss. The world population will likely increase to 9 billion in 40 years and we can’t feed ‘em all with only the genetics of 40 years ago when we fed 4 billion. All these protesters have one thing  in common, at least the ones in the U.S. and Europe: they’re well fed. None of ‘em are starving, except maybe by choice in order to fit into last summer’s swimsuit.

Historic quotes by Will Rogers:
“There is certain things nature can do to you (earthquakes, floods, tornados, drought)… When nature enters into it, don’t criticize.”
 DT #2081, April 5, 1933
“I am only an ignorant cowpuncher, but there ain’t nobody on earth, I don’t care how smart they are, ever going to make me believe they will ever stop wars.”  WA #32, July 22, 1923
 “A sure certainty about our Memorial days is as fast as the ranks from one war thin out, the ranks of another take their place… People talk peace, but men give their life’s work to war. It won’t stop till there is as much brains and scientific study put to aid peace as there is to promote war.” DT #888, May 31, 1929

Is it Ignorance or Incompetence? or Both.

Ignorance has been around for a long time, but never before has it been openly listed as a qualification for a high government job. Currently, it seems to rank above honesty, competence, and common horse sense. I said one time that “we’re all ignorant, just on different subjects.”  But I never expected that a subject you’re ignorant of is one they would put you in charge of.

It’s been a rough week for the President, what with Benghazi, IRS and the hassling of AP reporters. He was kinda hoping the murder trials of Jodi Arias and the baby-killing Philadelphia abortionist would last a while longer.

Now, we hear that key folks in the federal government claim they were ignorant, ignorant of any wrongdoing by the employees under their management. President Obama said he was ignorant of the IRS targeting Tea Party folks. The head of the IRS said he knew nothing, went before Congress, and proved that he knows absolutely nothing. Sarah Hall Ingram, in charge of the Cincinnati IRS office, said she was ignorant or incompetent, I’m not sure which. Maybe both.

Do you know what happens to a manager at the IRS who claims ignorance or incompetence? In Mrs. Ingram’s case you get a raise, bonuses and a promotion out of Cincinnati to run a new program with even more opportunities for ignorance to prevail.

The President says he is shocked that IRS agents in Cincinnati would throw up roadblocks against conservative organizations just because he was attacking them in campaign speeches. Those agents live in John Boehner’s back yard, belong to a union, and work in an agency the Republicans want to eliminate by instituting a flat tax. It’s no surprise they opposed the election of Republicans who would jeopardize their jobs, bonuses and promotions.

President Obama wants Congress to look forward, not backward. He told ‘em, “Disregard everything we covered up and ignored to get reelected in 2012, and we’ll work with you to see that it never happens again.”  After all, that was months ago. What difference does it make now.

You might say, why not have ignorant people running the government; voter’s ignorance is how many of them got elected.

It’s a shame. This claim of ignorance and incompetence by a few is making the majority of good honest folks working for the government look bad. Like I said about lawyers one time, the main goal should be to rid their ranks of the shysters.

Historic quotes by Will Rogers:
“An awful lot of boys and girls graduate this week all over the country. Ignorance is just about obliterated.”
 DT #907, June 23, 1929
 “All I know is just what I read in the papers, and that’s an alibi for my ignorance.” DT #1263, Aug. 12, 1930
 “We got a murder trial (dominating news coverage), and we don’t know a thing in the world that is happening outside of that, so pardon my ignorance.” DT #2203, Aug. 25, 1930
 “It’s not really intention on the government’s part that they don’t do better, it’s ignorance.” WA #428, March 8, 1931

Benghazi, immigration and the Dow Jones high

Today I was going to joke about how this column would have been three times longer and sent out hours sooner if I had not sent it to the White House for review first. Fortunately, before I wrote that little attempt at humor, I read about what the IRS did to organizations that appear to be opposed to the President.

What you see below is all mine, first draft, nothing deleted for national security or political purposes. So if you find grammar mistakes, you can’t blame Jay Carney.

While much of the country is just now realizing the facts about the Benghazi attack, as a  regular reader of this column you were well informed within a few days. Here’s what I wrote on September 16, 2012: The Administration announced that the murder of our Ambassador and 3 others in Libya on Sept. 11 was the result of a “spontaneous” protest. Sure, it was spontaneous in the same way thousands of men with guns suddenly appear in the woods the first day of deer season. Al Qaeda is behind the embassy attack in Egypt and other Muslim countries. They even taunted us with signs that read, “Obama, we’re all Osamas.”

Now I ain’t braggin’ about having any inside knowledge back then. In fact it seems the only ones who remained ignorant were President Obama, Secretary Clinton, Ambassador Rice, and most major networks and newspaper editors.

The big question in Washington today is “Who rewrote the original CIA Benghazi report 11 times?”  Steven Hayes and Jonathan Karl have nosed around Washington and dug up more than anyone else. I suggest the answer is not in Washington, but Chicago. David Axelrod, Rahm Emanuel, and Robert Gibbs are the fellows I would check out to see if they just might have telephoned in a few deletions about Islamic terrorists and instead placed blame on a video.
On a different matter, Attorney General Holder made a speech a week or so ago about immigrants. He flatly stated that anyone who can sneak into this country (which ain’t that hard to do) deserves civil rights the same as a U.S. citizen.  Yes, we have laws against illegal entry, and yes, the Attorney General is our top officer to enforce those laws. I sure don’t want to rile our top cop, but I feel that whatever country they sneaked in from is where they deserve their civil rights. It’s common horse sense. However, I have no doubt we’ll eventually agree to let most of these folks stay. If the Democrats would agree to let half of ‘em vote Republican it would pass for sure.

In some good news, the stock market topped 15,000 for the first time. Of course, it don’t look so great when you recall the Dow was over 14,000 five and a half years ago. Too bad the unemployment rate hasn’t returned to what it was five and half years ago.

Historic quote by Will Rogers:
“Give (Mother) a day, and then in return why Mother gives you the other 364. They could have given Mother a week, but that would have been giving Mother a little the best of it…”  
Radio, May 12, 1935

The Truth about Benghazi

The Muslim brothers who killed and maimed dozens in Boston were spies.
Like any spy, they pretended to carry on a normal life to fool everyone around them. Except for a few other Muslims (yet to be determined) nobody suspected anything, not even the FBI. Well, the Russians suspected ‘em, and warned us, but who trusts a Russian?

America has raised $28 million for the victims of the Boston terrorists. That’s good. But we need to remember also that a fertilizer plant in the small Texas town of West blew up. Fourteen died, almost 200 were injured, and tremendous damage was done to buildings. The nearby Waco Foundation is accepting contributions for the town.

I hate to write this about any President. But Obama’s answer about the Benghazi attack September 11 is the same as Sgt. Schultz’s on Hogan’s Heroes: “I know nothiiing.” And Secretary of State Clinton is no better. One of her ambassadors was killed by Islamic terrorists, and five months later she told Congress,  “What difference does it make now?” She said she did not even know that Ambassador Stevens had requested more security protection. Apparently she was busy trying to maintain peace and protect our national security by flying to places like Malawi, Latvia and Lithuania. And Benin, Burma and Togo, too.

Well, this week some men who survived the Benghazi terrorist attack will inform President Obama and Mrs. Clinton what the rest of us suspected all along. When they testify to Congress we’ll all learn details we should have learned, first hand, last October. The President kept the details hidden until after the 2012 election. Mrs. Clinton hopes the details are forgotten before the 2016 election.

Have you heard about the Pigford case? Fifteen years ago the Department of Agriculture admitted they had discriminated against some southern black farmers, and they deserved compensation. Well, out of an estimated 3000 farmers who might have been refused loans, how many do you suppose have filed a claim? About 100,000. So far. Out of those legitimate 3000, the most anyone collected was $50,000. But one man collected $10,000,000. You might say, ‘He must have been a really big farmer.’ No, he’s a lawyer. A big shyster lawyer named Al Pires. He recruited many of the 97,000 pretend farmers, promised to get them some free money, and pirated a big chunk of it for himself.  This scheme has cost us taxpayers way over two Billion dollars, with most going to lawyers who turn around and grease the palms of politicians who keep the scheme going with no end in sight.

Another shyster lawyer convinced USDA that Cherokees and other Indian farmers deserved $750,000,000; so far the lawyer distributed $300,000,000 but they have hung on to the rest. The only way an Indian farmer has a chance to make as much from his land as the lawyer is to build a casino on it. The odds on that ain’t so good either.

Historic quotes by Will Rogers:
“3500 lawyers of the American Bar Association are here (in Los Angeles) eating us out of house and home. They are here, they say, ‘to save the Constitution, to preserve State rights.’ What they ought to be here for, that would make this convention immortal, is to kick the crooks out of their profession.” 
 DT #2789, July 14, 1935
 “Went down and spoke at (the ABA convention) last night. They didn’t think much of my little squib yesterday about driving the shysters out of their profession. They seemed to kinder doubt just who would have to leave.” DT #2791, July 16, 1935