Whither the weather?

Probably the most frequently consulted authority on weather here in the New Millennium is the Weather Channel. It has a plethora of data from a variety of sources which it gives to its personnel, all trained in the mystical arts of meteorology, and from all of these resources, it delivers, between the many commercials also seen here, forecasts, both immediate and long-range.

There is just one thing wrong with this rosy scenario: It requires a bit of intuition to put up an accurate forecast, and that is sometimes lacking. Take the storm that left us with around a foot of snow over the Christmas holiday. None of us ever doubted that the storm would hit. Its arrival was predicted, and the time it would come was set in stone. So people all over the U. S. were braced, but until the storm actually showed up, a lot of people didn’t know exactly what they were bracing for.

Take the track the storm would take when the low moved off the East Coast into the Atlantic. When the storm was still trying to wash California into the Pacific, the New England states were put on notice; a possible nor’easter was out there. But then, before the storm took aim at the mid-west, someone at the Weather Channel decided the storm would veer farther out to sea, so the predicted storm wouldn’t materialize in New England. And everyone breathed easier, until a day or so before Christmas, when the nor’easter was suddenly back on, and Monday saw a lot of the big Eastern Cities either digging out of a fairly sizable snow, or waiting their turn to do so.

Now you see the limitations of all that modern technology. So, what’s a body to do if an accurate forecast is needed? Well, there are the tried and true methods perfected-if that is the right word-by our ancestors.

One such source is Frank Crum. Frank, who is noted for his ability both as a preacher and as a columnist for the Express, is also schooled in reading signs that properly interpreted, will yield a long-range forecast. So, each year, around September, once the proper signs have been noted, Frank writes up his winter forecast in one of his columns. Unlike the Weather Channel, however, Frank will warn his readers that results may vary.

Then there is the Old Farmer’s Almanac. This publication has been offering up weather predictions a year at a time for well over 200 years. And it sometimes even gets some of them right. Take the forecast for the first part of December, delivered in the form of a verse: “Mild relief briefly-cold and snowy chiefly. Breath makes vapors as we yield ice scrapers.” Pretty much spot on, I’d say.

Which brings us to my favorite year-long forecasting method, the Ruling Days. The last six days of the old year and the first six days of the new year are each said to rule a particular month’s weather. The beauty of trying to make sense of this system is that by the time that month rolls around, you not only won’t remember what the ruling day for it forecast, you probably will have forgotten what a ruling day is.

The Weather Channel should have it so good.

Getting’ Ready for Christmas Day

Christmas gifts probably stem from the story of the magi who came to worship the newly-born Savior bearing gold, frankincense and myrrh. Yes, gift giving gets overblown at times, but it can be a good thing when the recipients are not expecting any really cool gifts.

Paul Simon is the bearer of such a gift this year. Though he is far removed from his Tom and Jerry days, the name he and Art Garfunkel first performed under, he has new music out, including a Christmas song, the title of which I have borrowed for this column.

This song,” Getting Ready for Christmas Day”, is taken from a sermon given by an African American preacher, J M Gates, recorded in the 30’s. The song also samples another sermon given by Preacher Gates, in which Preacher Gates suggests that the undertaker may be your Santa Claus. So, as this might suggest, this isn’t a happy Christmas tune.

The singer works two jobs so he can afford to buy Christmas gifts. His nephew is in Iraq for the third time and looks to be in the Afghan war by Christmas. Still, the singer accepts all with a stoicism that would do us all proud in a time of economic hardship and the continuing war on terror. All in all, another fine effort from Rhymin’ Simon.

Giving the unexpected gift is a wonderful thing, in and of itself. I got to do that way back when I was in the U. S. Army, serving in West Berlin. Every year, our company, Company C, hosted a Christmas party for a school that housed children with special needs. We spared no expense in raising money for this yearly tradition, and managed to give every child a new gift each year at a party they all looked forward to.

But there was another opportunity and that was for volunteers to just be there at the party to greet each child with a hug and to ensure they all had a good time. I was understandably, at least in my mind, reluctant to get involved in this part of the project.

I didn’t speak the children’s language very well. In fact, I hardly spoke it at all. I could barely manage to make myself misunderstood in German. But something made me go, anyway. I had one angle and a Polaroid camera, and I planned to take pictures of the children as they got their gifts. And I planned to do my best with my limited ability to communicate with them.

Turns out I had nothing to worry about. One of the children, a boy maybe 10 or so, became my beste freund, and accompanied me throughout the building for the duration of the party. I took a lot of pictures, and surrendered the photos to the children or to their care takers. Again, I was unsure of how this was going over, but I was having a ball, and that was unexpected.

At the end of the party, one of the school’s personnel came over to me and expressed thanks for the photos I’d taken. He assured me the children’s parents were all very happy and that this had made the party extra special.

And that was my special gift for that Christmas.

Another week, another snow storm

Looking at the calendar, I see that we are entering the third week of December. Looking outside, I see, for the second time in a week we’re snowed in. Okay, I have been around long enough to know snow this time of year isn’t a rare occurrence. I’m a double-nickel fellow myself-birth year was 55-and I remember the first few winters from the early 60’s when we’d sometimes get scenes like this before Halloween.

Still, what makes this year’s weather a bit sneaky is it was so warm for so long. You know, the weather fakes you out with all that Indian summer, temps in the 60’s right up through November, and when you aren’t looking, sucker punches you with really cold weather and snow. Oh, well, nothing to do but sit back and hope that this doesn’t last into April.

One really rude surprise is the return of slick roads. This isn’t Atigun Pass, and we aren’t Ice Road Truckers. Heck, if it was, we’d all be prepared. But when so much time passes between really good snows, you forget the little tricks that make driving on slick roads a little safer. Here’s one that was passed on to me by my cousin.

If you’re driving an automatic-and that’s almost everybody- when you try to stop quickly on icy surfaces, the car wants to slide. But that’s because the transmission is still applying torque to the drive wheels. If you put the car in neutral as you apply the brakes, the car will come to a smooth, straight stop.

For added safety, practice the panic stops, and get yourself used to putting the car in neutral as you apply the brakes. This could keep videos of you careening wildly as you try in vain to bring your vehicle under control off youtube.

On the plus side, it is December, and we are so close to Christmas. Yes, the holiday is as commercial as it ever was, but that goes with the season. Snow in December can help mitigate all that’s bad about Christmas, and help emphasize all you find right about the Yuletide.

My favorite traditions are certain Noels and television specials. Do I need to list A Christmas Carol, A Charlie Brown Christmas, Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer, or It’s a Wonderful Life, to name but a few f our best-loved holiday shows?

Oh, then there’s the chance to take your sled to the top of a really high hill and try to break the sound barrier on your way down. Just remember that if you aren’t as young as you once were, old bones break more easily and take more time to heal.

That said, if you like extreme sledding, you might want to join the daredevils on Grapevine, where the locals sometimes patiently wait for a good snowfall, then throw the sleds in the back of a four-wheel drive truck, and drive to the top of Island Creek Mountain. From there it’s a long, hairy cruise down several miles of a curvy mountain road.

Okay, I only did this one time myself, but it’s not like I’m afraid to go again. It’s just that I don’t want to deprive anyone else of their chance if there aren’t enough sleds to go around.

The Great Snowstorm of Feb., 1985

Let the first snow of the season hit and the topic will soon become memorable snows from days gone by. The older you get, the more apt you are to engage in this sort of reverie, and for obvious reasons: You can remember things from several decades ago, even if you aren’t sure what you had for breakfast this morning.

I may be wrong but I am convinced that the worst snow ever to hit Pike County was the one that hit in February of 1985. This storm that started in on Monday left over three feet of snow in its wake, it left a large number of people without power and, to top it all off, it was cold.

I worked for the county then in Solid Waste. I lived on Coal Run Hill. By Tuesday morning, when I got up to go in to work, I heard on the radio how dire the situation was. Most roads in the county were shut down, and no one was to get out. People were stranded in Pikeville with no way home and the county was organizing four-wheel drive trucks to shuttle people back to their places of residence.

I decided to see if I could get to work since I only had a few miles to go. The four-lane below Pikeville was completely deserted and was reduced to a two-lane road, as the passing lanes were snowed in, and, as Larry Webster, in his next Red Dog, observed, those open lanes were just wide enough for an economy car.

One of the first people I saw after I got to the courthouse was Fuzzy Keesee. Fuzzy was between gigs as sheriff then and when he came in, someone asked him where he’d been that morning. Casually, Fuzzy replied that he’d been over on Pawpaw campaigning. Of course, that bought a laugh, but to tell the truth, I’m still not certain that he wasn’t serious.

First night in, around 8 pm, some people called Judge Patton to complain about the electricity. Paul tried to explain that he had no control over when the power came back on, but the sad tale of a household with no heat moved him to send me and a co-worker out with wood from his own supply. So we bravely ventured forth in the Judge’s Cherokee to where these people lived. We pulled up in their driveway, turned off the key, and watched, wide-eyed, as the power came back on. No, they said, we don’t need the wood now. Thanks, anyway.

Howard Justice led the group of workers/coffee drinkers. The coffee supply gave out on the second day; well, all but for the de-caf. We were desperate enough to actually drink it. Howard made the second pot, still full, when we got some more of the hi-test, whereupon Howard poured out the just-brewed de-caf. “Why’d you do that?” I asked. Howard just looked at me like I was crazy and made some hi-test. “Because!” he said, and that was that.

By Thursday, the crises played itself out. Everyone got power back, the roads were gradually cleared, and everyone got to go home. Everyone but the Judge, that is. He stayed until Saturday. But that’s why he got the big bucks.

Dealing with the (Oc)cult

Dealing with the (Oc)cult


North Korea’s recent artillery attack on South Korea’s Yeonpyeong Island is symptomatic of a country that is habitually a sociopathic society. One of the biggest hurdles to effecting change there is the cult of personality that passes for North Korean government. Unlike most communist nations that have some sort of plan in place, no matter how vague, for a transition of leadership, in North Korea, the power has stayed in the Kim family. Ergo, there has been little opportunity to engage anyone in the North Korean government.

But this may be about to change. The Beloved Leader, Kim Jong Il, is about to pass the mantle of leadership to a member of his immediate family, his youngest son, Kim Jong Un. And this time, there is an unprecedented chance to get inside the inner workings of the North Korean government to begin what can only be likened to putting the whole country in a decompression chamber.

Another one of the biggest obstacle to bringing change to North Korea has been the patronage afforded by their relationship with the Soviet Union and China. No matter what, the North always had these two to stand by it. But the Soviet Union is now history, and China, once a Hermit Kingdom itself, has embraced a pseudo-capitalistic economy, and has healthy economic ties with both the United States and North Korea’s arch nemesis, South Korea.

Nonetheless, China still maintains strong ties to North Korea, and it has a strong influence on that country. It is this influence that the United States and other countries in the region have been urging Beijing to use to rein in this rogue state, a move that China seems reluctant to make.

So North Korea, like a spoiled child, is able to rattle its sabre whenever it chooses, and the world seems helpless, even in the wake of overt acts of war. Any military response, it is reasoned, would lead to a resumption of the Korean War that ended in 1953 in a cease-fire, a war that would make Iraq look like a walk in the park. Seoul, the South’s capital, is within easy reach of the North’s potent artillery and a massive amount of damage could be inflicted, damage that could easily endanger South Korea’s economy and, by extension, the world’s economy.

If change is to come to North Korea, it must come slowly, much the same way a deep-sea diver undergoes decompression when returning to the surface. What with the impending change in leadership, China, working with their new allies, now has a chance to see the emergence of a new North Korea.

China must act quickly to establish close ties with Kim Jong Un. He must be made aware of the fact that the situation within his country must change. First, China, the U. S., Japan, and South Korea must pledge that the North will not be subject to any attacks. Secondly, China must emphasize its own struggle with change, a change that has seen it emerge as one of the world’s great powers. Then China must promise to help the North begin this change within its own borders.

This effort has a chance to succeed by bringing the Hermit Kingdom out of its shell and back into the community of nations.

T(SA)hanksgiving?

Considering the general dreariness of November, it isn’t any surprise that a holiday devoted to giving thanks should be scheduled at the end of this month. Contemplating that delicious meal that awaits us on the last Thursday of November gives us something to do besides complain about the weather. Not that every November is gray and awful, just the most of them.

In the days before global warming, those of us who elected to take dinner at the home of a relative had a more pleasant way of getting there. “Over the River and Through the Woods” may not accurately reflect how we traveled in days gone by, but it does evoke a pleasant image of a sleigh ride to Grandma’s house.

Fast forward to the 21st Century, and we find that getting to Grandma’s isn’t so simple as it once was. Likely, Grandma and all of her compadres have high-tailed it to warmer climes. That trip to give a hurrah for all things Thanksgiving now requires more than a “horse (who) knows the way to carry the sleigh through the white and drifted snow”. It also requires more nerve than a bum tooth, thanks to the “security” measures now in place at the airports, before the modern equivalent of the horse and sleigh can be boarded.

This is all necessary, according to officials of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), whose purpose is to “ensure freedom of movement for people and commerce”. We will pause briefly to allow laughter to subside. Why, you ask, displaying your wide eyes and innocence? Well, some idiot tried to blow up his underwear on a flight sometime back, and now, to protect everyone, TSA agents logically assume that everyone has a bomb in their bloomers.

And how does one thwart someone with that sort of explosive package? It would seem that this is done by randomly pulling would-be passengers aside and giving them a choice in how they would like their close encounter of third kind to go-a gentle pat-down that a subway groper would be hard-pressed to duplicate, or a full-body scan guaranteed to reveal your true personality.

By the way, the airplanes’ crews were, at first, also required to undergo these “security measures”, but the pilots demurred, and, let’s face it, if the pilots ain’t on board, no one is going anywhere, so this one group goes ungroped.

But for the rest of us? Not so lucky. TSA Director John Pistole has declared his determination to keep the new procedures in place, while at the same time promising to keep the pat downs from becoming “too invasive”. That might be hard to prove to those passengers who have what can only be described as horror stories to tell after TSA agents cleared them to board. A breast cancer survivor had to remove her prosthesis for inspection, while a bladder cancer survivor was left covered in urine after the TSA agent broke the seal of his urostomy bag, even after he was told that this could happen by his victim.

What the TSA doesn’t realize is that 99.9% of passengers are not terrorists. Nor do they see that simply being sensitive to the needs of passengers undergoing these procedures would go a long way in keeping everyone safe while we travel.

Short Attention Span Theater

What is it about the American public and its short attention span? Remember when we were all fighting mad about the mosque everyone thought was going to be built at ground zero? Yeah, the mosque that turned out to be an Islamic community center that wasn’t going to be built on ground zero, but on the site of an abandoned Burlington coat factory four blocks away? Red hot only yesterday, but can’t get arrested today. We’ve moved on.



Closer to home, a mine explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine in Montcoal, W Va. took the lives of 29 miners on April 5 of this year. No, I’m not suggesting that anyone close by has forgotten this, but you have to admit this hasn’t been in the news a lot lately. We don’t even hear much about the on-going investigation as to the cause of the explosion.



That disaster was followed up by the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig on April 20. This explosion took the lives of 11 workers and before it was over released an estimated 185,000,000 gallons of oil into the fragile ecosystem of the Gulf of Mexico.



Despite the outcry from the public that demanded explanations and solutions, once the disasters were off the front page, the ardor surrounding them seems to have cooled as well. In the case of the biggest oil spill in the history of oil exploration, once that well was capped and the video cam of the leak disappeared from the internet, within a month’s time, you’d have sworn that the oil also disappeared, along with everyone’s desire to see Big Oil punished.



For instance, in the aftermath of his disaster, Rep. Joe Barton, R., Tx., a member of the House Energy Committee, actually apologized to the perceived perpetrator, British Petroleum, for what he termed a $20 billion shakedown by the Obama administration. Bipartisan outrage soon cooled, and that same Member of Congress will, in all likelihood, chair this committee, now that the GOP has been granted control of the House again by a forgetting and forgiving public.



Sadly, the same thing is true of the Montcoal disaster. Much about this has been forgotten, or is just not talked about. The first thing the public became aware of was the inordinate number of safety violations committed at that mine. And of course, everyone wanted to know was why the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) hadn’t more to insure the miners’ safety. Why wasn’t the mines operator, Massey Energy, held accountable for how they ran that mine?



Fast forward to November and we find that another Massey Mine, this one in Pike County, is also receiving an inordinate number of safety violations that, according to MSHA, could easily lead to a similar accident. Massey immediately responded with the following statement: "Massey does not believe the mine is unsafe."



So, of the two, MSHA or Massey, which of these has the longer attention span? From circumstantial evidence, it would seem to be MSHA. Instead of repeatedly citing Massey, this time it has signaled its intention to shut down this mine until it begins to operate safely.



Had this been done a little earlier, perhaps 29 miners would still be alive and still working at Upper Big Branch.

Was it something I said?

The massacre that so many foresaw took place on Nov. 2, and for once, I am speechless. I tried to rationalize before and afterwards, but I am still at a loss.

Yes, I have head the various explanations, but they all seem to be lacking somehow. Take those who say the Obama administration and its Democratic cohorts were all guilty of extending government’s reach into private enterprise and vast overspending. The one thing they had in mind was the stimulus package introduced after President Obama took office.

But there are a couple of points that need to be made here. One, even though this bill was vilified by every Republican in America, it did not keep any one of them from posing when projects made possible by this bill were in the papers. Two of those local projects are the new parking garage/office building to be erected at the Pikeville Medical Center and the building that will soon house Pikeville College’s School of Osteopathic Medicine. Both are being built with stimulus funds.

Sen. McConnell’s supported a stimulus bill similar to Obama's, Bush 43’s Troubled Asset Relief Program. He took some heat from the voters, but was around to cast aspersions against those who supported Obama’s bill.

Then there are those who cite the left-leaning legislation adopted by the Democrat-controlled Congress and President Obama; i. e., Obamacare. This, said the loyal opposition, was nothing short of socialism. Of course they said this about Obama when they weren’t calling him a Fascist or a radical Muslim.

Funny thing about taking that tack, especially when one of the chief complaints to voters about Obamacare was that it was going to bankrupt Medicare. That was the rallying cry; Obamacare was going to cut $500 million from Medicare. Almost makes you wonder if the conservatives leading this charge had any memory of what they said about Medicare when it was enacted.

Some of the Monday-morning quarterbacks are of the idea that this election was a mid-course adjustment. What happened as a result was the electorate simply ousted the liberals who were busy, well, doing whatever it is that makes us hate liberals so.

That notwithstanding, a lot of the victims of the Nov. 2nd purge were Blue Dog Democrats. Across the south, mid-west, and west, time and again, these stalwart defenders of conservative values went down to defeat to their Republican opponents.

One of these Members of Congress was Democrat Rep. Rick Boucher, from the 9th Congressional District of Virginia. Here was a Congressman who was a staunch supporter of coal and yet had to defend himself against the charge that he was joining in Obama’s so-called war on coal. Even a commercial from the founder of United Coal Company was not enough to save his job.

No, the voters have spoken. Now the GOP has its majority in the House of Representatives back, and they are free to begin their quest to restore sanity to our government. First up will be to balance the budget by responsible spending, and they hope to start that by making permanent the tax breaks for the wealthiest 2% of the country, even if it does add another $700 billion to the deficit over the next ten years.

How did Einstein define insanity again?

Oligarchy or not

One of the hardest questions ever asked of me came in a political science class at the University of Kentucky. Who holds power in the U. S., the people or the elite of our society?


Of course, the majority said it was the people. Power derives from mandates given by the voters of the country. Once the people lose confidence, then power will change hands.

Plenty of evidence could be introduced to support either viewpoint, and any judgment would be subjective. Still, the question had done its job; it made us think about who wields political power and from whom it is derived.

Of course, in any election, there are any number of variables that will shape the outcome. From the time of President Clinton, for instance, we have a phrase made popular by his campaign: “It’s the economy, stupid!” Put simply, any chance of his getting elected depended on his ability to shape the country’s perception of how well off they were. By being successful, Mr. Clinton defeated an incumbent whose popularity ratings had been close to 90% at the end of the first Iraqi war, or one year prior, plus or minus a little one way or the other.

But there is another variable in any election, and that is the amount of money that is available to help make the case for any politician or party. The more of this commodity there is, the better able either is to make sure the voters see things their way.

Money has always been seen as the corrupter in politics in this country. Money once made its way into the process at precinct levels when unscrupulous politicians paid the voters to cast a ballot for them. This is frowned upon today, so you no longer see vote buying practiced as openly as it once was.

Buying the vote of the office holders, though, is another matter. Well-heeled organizations and individuals can still grease the skids whenever they choose. And it is sure that once a politician becomes the beneficiary of a large donation from a powerful special interest, that individual does not forget it when the special interest needs a favor between elections.

By special rules, though, this is not defined as vote buying. Representatives of special interests may visit an office holder and discuss how things should be done. And they can also donate money to that office holder. They just cannot do both at the same time. That is in bad taste.

There have been, at various times, efforts to minimize the effect that money has on our election process, but each time, such as was the case in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, bans on special interest money are often overturned. The result of this ruling by the U. S. Supreme Court has been to turn loose a veritable flood of special interest money.

In effect, if this tide elects a Congress that is beholden to the font of the campaign cash, doesn’t power then derive, not from the people but from contributions from the elite? We can only hope not, because that would change the very nature of who we are as a nation, from a democracy to an oligarchy, and that is not a change for the better.

Notes on the coming election

First of all, if you don’t vote on Tues., Nov. 2nd, you are part of the problem. We are, after all, a democracy, and power derives from a mandate that is given by the voters of the country. If every voter does not exercise the right to cast a ballot, a fundamental right on which our country is based is endangered. Voter apathy also makes it easier for the unscrupulous to take power and to keep it. So, do your part and vote.

That said, is there anything that can be done to increase voter turnout on Election Day? How about this? We make sure that all voters are enfranchised.

Take primary elections, for instance. Primary elections are held for one purpose; to allow the Democrats and Republicans to set their slate of candidates for the General Election. To vote in the primary in Kentucky, though, you must be registered as a member of one of these two parties.

So who pays the tab for the primaries? Kentucky’s taxpayers, that’s who. Even those voters registered as Independent contribute, even though they aren’t invited to the party.

What did our Forebears think of this? Does the phrase “Taxation without Representation” ring a bell? When the colonists were expected to pay taxes to the Crown, but denied the right to vote, they revolted, and a new country was born.

This country was going to be one where the rights of everyone were respected. It took some time but we are closer to that ideal today than perhaps we’ve ever been. But when a situation exists where the citizens of our state are expected to declare allegiance to a political party in order to vote-and neither Democrats nor Republicans are mentioned in either the state or federal Constitutions-then we have lost our way, big time!

When primary elections are closed, the number of voters the candidate needs to reach is limited, usually to what is referred as the party’s base. For the Republicans, those voters tend to be conservative; for the Democrats, liberal. That means that the views of the candidate must match the viewpoints of the party’s base.

And that means gridlock, in Frankfort and in Washington. In Frankfort, how many times over the last ten years or so has the State Assembly failed to pass a budget because the Republican-led Senate could not agree with the Democrat-led House? More times than you might imagine, much like the quagmire in D. C., where the “loyal opposition” has made it plain that ensuring Obama is a one-term President is more important than in working with the majority party to formulate any policies that will benefit the country as a whole.

In addition to allowing early voting, I would like to see laws enacted in Kentucky that strip away the two major party’s right to require voters to declare allegiance to either of them. No voter should have to disclose any more than their name, rank, and serial number. Let the voter declare to the precinct officials what party’s primary they wish to vote in. Then let the candidates deliver their message to all voters in the primary. The result should be candidates who more closely mirror, not their party’s extremes, but the average Kentuckian, a win-win situation for everyone.

Believe it or not!

It’s common knowledge by this point that the public is fed up with that collection of do-nothings known as Congress. Perhaps the most repeated line in any race for Member of Congress in any state is the one about “my opponent (being) a career politician”, spoken in much the same tone used when mentioning ax-murderers.



Well, Congress has always been an easy mark. Generation after generation have used it as the punch line in their jokes. One quip goes “We have the best lawmakers money can buy!” And while Will Rogers is given credit, there might have been any number of people who said that, or felt that way, before he gave voice to this sentiment.



There is reason to be concerned about money in this year’s elections, by the way. Take the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission wherein it was ruled that corporations have the same rights as individuals. This means that entities registered as corporations cannot be blocked from spending money on political ads, because to do so would be a violation of their right to free expression. Hence the explosion of ads not paid for by any particular candidate, but rather by a group either for or against that candidate.



All that notwithstanding, Congress has not been idle this session. This has been the most productive since the 89th Congress that met in 1965-66 and passed LBJ’s Great Society programs.



“What?!?” you ask, mouth agape. “What has this collection of clowns done?” First up is that much maligned stimulus bill. That would be the one introduced by President Obama, not his immediate predecessor. What was in it that is helpful? How about tax cuts? Yes, tax cuts, some of the largest in history. We’re talking tax credits for college tuition, home buying, energy conservation, and for renewable energy, to name but a few areas addressed in this bill.



But that ain’t all. Remember the stimulus bill that was made necessary by the sweeping de-regulation that took place during the presidency of George W., the one that made his stimulus bill necessary? This Congress passed new regulatory legislation that aims to keep that from ever happening again.



And then there is that much-maligned healthcare overhaul that its critics have dubbed Obamacare. You know, the one individual senatorial candidates vow to “repeal”, as in “I will repeal Obamacare”? Wait a minute, you’re running for Senator, not Superman. Heck, if one Senator could do what some candidates pledge to do, they’d fly (Up, up and away!) to D. C. when they got elected.



One big problem the would-be lawmakers say they have is the requirement that everyone must buy health insurance. This is what has led at least 20 state Attorneys General to file suit against the feds. According to one, if the feds can force you to buy health insurance, they can force you to buy pretty much anything, not unlike most politicians think you will do whenever they make campaign promises.



Well, if the feds can’t make you buy health insurance, then let’s relieve them of the responsibility of paying the bills for those people who won’t buy it when they don’t need it, and can’t buy it when they do. After all, that’s only fair isn’t it?

Another perspective on Columbus Day

Familiarity breeds contempt. Aesop



I am writing this column on Oct. 12, the day known as Columbus Day. Once upon a time, this would have been the actual date of this holiday, but then someone decided that minor holidays are better if they fall on a Monday, thus giving us a three-day weekend. So we now have two versions of a lot of these holidays, the actual date on which whatever it is we are celebrating took place, and the day on which we choose to celebrate this event.

By the way, minor holidays are the ones that offer a lucky few a day off, in this instance, bankers and federal workers. The rest of us are still expected to show up at the salt mines.

So, as Bugs Bunny might ask “What’s all the hubbub, Bub?” On Columbus Day-and by using my handy dandy calculator, I find that this was 518 years ago-an Italian sailing under the auspices of the Spanish crown “discovered” America.

I can just see it now: Columbus and his men, uncertain as to where they were and not knowing what might happen to them, suddenly see land, and Chris declares “Look! I have discovered a new land!” And one of his men, not seeing what his Captain saw, asks “Where?” “Right there” says Chris, “where all those people are standing. That’s the land I have discovered.”

BTW, indigenous people don’t seem to be as taken with the man the Spanish called Cristobal Colon as those descended from Europeans are. One reason might be that since that day in 1492, they have been misidentified.

A college Professor and member of one of the bands of the original inhabitants of this land was asked on the Phil Donahue show how he preferred to be identified, as an Indian or a Native American. He replied that he didn’t care. One term, he said, was coined by a sociologist in the ‘60’s, and the other came from a lost white man who thought he was in India.

That was the least of Cristobal’s sins, though. For instance, it was Cristobal and the Spanish who unleashed a holocaust on the Caribbean natives known as the Arawak. Cristobal had told the crown, after all, of the great riches to be found in the land that he had discovered, and he was in a lather to prove his claims.

On his second voyage to the island inhabited by them, Cristobal and his men demanded that the Arawak bring them gold; more than existed on their islands. When the Arawak could not meet the unreasonable demand, a slaughter began. These people were shot, hanged or burned to death. Although they tried to resist this invasion, they were greatly outclassed by the Spanish who had, among other weapons, muskets.

When Cristobal first found them, there were 250,000 of the Arawak. The Spanish killed them by the tens of thousands, and within a remarkably short time, the Arawak were gone. There are none of this people left on Earth today.

Naturally, this is not celebrated on this holiday.

Not that the Spanish got by unmolested. Seems that some of his men, when committing the crime of rape, came away with the disease we know today as syphilis. Well, as the old saying goes: "The wheel of justice grinds slow, but it grinds exceeding fine."

You may be Mitch-taken

You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts. Daniel Patrick Moynihan



U. S. Senator Mitch McConnell likes to keep the people of the Commonwealth informed by occasionally penning missives to the editors of local papers published throughout the Bluegrass state, such as the one printed in the Oct. 1st edition of the Appalachian News-Express. Funny thing is if I didn’t know he was merely keeping us informed, I’d swear this was meant to better the Republicans’ chances in the upcoming election.

Take the whole to-do over what to do about federal taxes. McConnell, et al, would like to see the Bush era tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy made permanent under the assumption that this is the way to decrease the unemployment rate. That flies in the face of reality, though, because after these tax cuts were enacted, unemployment rates inexplicably went from 4.2% in 2001 to 9.2% today.

McConnell tries to give the impression that if the Bush era tax cuts aren’t extended, everyone will pay higher taxes. He does this by averaging the tax bills out among all tax payers, while overlooking the tax breaks planned for the bottom 98% of tax payers. In fact, by concentrating on tax breaks for the lower tiers of wage earners, the Democrats have the tax burden for this group at its lowest level since 1957.

One other curious prediction by McConnell is that if the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy are allowed to lapse, Kentucky wage earners will see over the next ten years a drop of $3000 per year in disposable income. He doesn’t mention that income for the bottom 98% of wage earners has been in decline since the tax bill was passed in 2001.

McConnell also takes aim at the law the Grand Old Tea Party (GOTP) has dubbed Obamacare. McConnell forecasts higher costs and decreased choice. Never mind that since McConnell led the charge against the last attempt to pass healthcare reform in 1994, its costs went up astronomically and the number of Americans without health insurance sky-rocketed.

Additionally, McConnell overlooks the estimate by the Congressional Budget Office that healthcare reform will result in a reduction in the federal deficit by 1.3 trillion through 2029. This is odd in light of the fact that reducing the deficit seems to be a pet project of the GOTP, even if extending the tax breaks for the rich would add around a quarter of a trillion dollars to the federal deficit.

By the way, McConnell, et al, have set a precedent that will in all likelihood preclude the repeal of Obamacare even if the GOP gets complete control of the Congress. It only takes one senator to keep a bill from ever being voted on, and even if no one senator does that, it now officially takes 60 senators to get a bill passed, thanks to the lock-step manner in which the GOP usually votes.

What the GOTP and Senator McConnell are penning their hopes on is the voters will either forget or forgive their role in creating the mess the country is in and reward them by putting them in charge once more. Risky, in my opinion, since they seem intent on business as usual if this happens

Colbert’s Big Adventure

Nobody told me there’d be days like these; most peculiar, Mama. John Lennon



If you are puzzled by the state of current affairs in the New Millennium, you have only to consider one thing; two of the most watched news sources are The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and the Colbert Report (Col-ber re-por, as in faux French) with Stephen Colbert.

These shows are considered to be “fake news shows”, but that concept might be misleading. It isn’t so much that they report on “fake news”, but that their take on regular news doesn’t follow the pattern laid down by mainstream media. And if you want to know why so many people watch shows that are so unlike the major news sources, consider this: Sarah Palin and others on the right distrust the “liberal press” so much that they refer to it as the “lame stream media”.

These shows have their own followers and have each staked out “opposing” sides in their world that mirror the conflict in the real world between, say, Fox News and MSNBC. To emphasize this nature of their rivalry, when Stewart announced plans for the Rally to Restore Sanity, a parody of Fox News commentator Glen Beck’s Restoring Honor Rally, Colbert immediately came up with “The March to Keep Fear Alive”, to be held the same day.

Colbert parodies the right-wing commentators such as Bill O’Reilly, or O’Really, depending on who you ask, and does a spot-on impression of these darlings of the conservative set. Stewart, on the other hand, is more willing to take on anything he sees as farcical, no matter who is responsible. He has weighed in on every segment of the media, including MSNBC, Faux, er, Fox and CNN with no more mercy than he shows the nation’s politicians, to include the President and anyone in his administration, or anyone from the “loyal opposition”.

This setup seldom sees any deviation in its script, but from time to time, fake news manages to stray into the real world, and this happened this last week when Stephen Colbert, the poor man’s Rush Limbaugh, was invited to testify before Congress by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), whose subcommittee is holding hearings on a bill that would legalize undocumented field workers. These two met when they took up a challenge by the United Farm Workers to work in the fields that are the places of employment for migrant workers who pick the fruit and vegetables that feed our country.

Perhaps it was his decision to testify in character that led to the sharp criticism from leaders of both the Republicans and Democrats in Congress. Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D., Md. and John Conyers, D. Mich., spoke for the Democrats. Hoyer called Colbert an “embarrassment”, while Conyers bluntly asked Colbert to "leave the committee room completely and submit your statement instead."

Neither Republicans nor their counterparts in the conservative media were any more happy about Colbert’s testimony. Everyone took their turn, and much like their real-life nemeses, the Democrats, suggested that Congress was no place for a “comedian”, and that his appearance was shameful.

Rightly said. Colbert bought shame-to comedians, everywhere. At least no comedian ever pretended to be serious when they said really funny things like “I will work for a balanced budget.”

…never having to say you’re sorry

Lately it seems to me that being a coal producer means, well, see the title of this column. What it does mean is that if you find you have what the Brits might call a “bit of a sticky wicket”, you can simply redefine the issue.


Take the “controversial” practice of mountaintop removal (MTR), a phrase synonymous with strip mining. It was given this moniker because the strippers now concentrate on the tops of the mountains. I’m unsure if their previous focus was on the bottoms of the mountains, but be that as it may, MTR has been the phrase du jour.

Lately, MTR seems to have fallen from grace with the coal operators. Evokes an image that is too negative. So employing the Orwellian practice of newspeak, and the good, common sense native to public relations people the world over, coal producers are now using the term mountaintop development (MTD) to describe their destructive method of getting at the region’s coal.

The coal producers also use every opportunity to let you know that coal is the reason we have such “cheap” rates for electricity. But considering that fellow coal producer, Kentucky Electric Power, recently got a hefty increase in the rate it charges for this service, the two of them might have to get together to come up with a new definition for that word, as well.

But back to MTD, I’m unsure who inspired the use of that particular phrase. I know that one “supporter of coal”, our state senator, Ray Jones, voiced an opinion about MTR or MTD, depending on who you ask, around the time the circus in the form of the Corps of Engineers came to town last year to solicit comments on a proposed rule change to Nationwide Permit 21. Sen. Jones said that any mountaintop in this area that hasn’t been mined is worthless, so perhaps Sen. Jones should be given credit here.

As to that assertion, I’m sure the people at the Breaks Interstate Park would be surprised to find out that those peaks that draw so many visitors to this region are, in fact, good for nothing. But if Sen. Jones goes over and shows them how flattening, say, that part of the park that now contains the Towers, as seen from the overlook of the same name, so that it could be used for, say, parking, or a nice factory, they would gladly allow this. No one wants to be stuck with worthless land when ammonium nitrate and fuel oil would give it so much more value.

Barring this, we might have to concede that we are now living in an era that Joni Mitchell wrote about in her song, “Big Yellow Taxi” (Take away the trees, and put ‘em in a tree museum. Then you charge all the people a dollar and a half just to see ‘em.)

Of course, to really make MTD meaningful, you might want to see some of those flattened mountaintops actually contain something. In Pike County, none do. No hospitals, no golf courses, no factories, just flattened land that allows rainfall to become a rushing torrent on its way to the river as it takes everything along with it in its haste to get to the sea.

The real drug pushers

If there is one thing columnists are aware of, it is this: Very few people will tell you what a great column you’ve written, but if anybody disagrees with your assessments, you can be sure that they will be heard from. With that in mind, let me say that the column written by Wayne Bartley (Traipsing) for the Weekend Edition (The cuckoo’s nest) is easily one of the best he’s ever written. I love the analogy he uses. It fits perfectly. Kudos, sir, kudos.

There are many who think along the same lines as Mr. Bartley. The drug war has seen the U. S. imprison more of its citizens than any country in the world. For exact statistics, you might go to this site: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/world/americas/23iht-23prison.12253738.html?_r=1. Here, the author of a New York Times article, Adam Liptak, in a piece written in April 2008, looks into the reasons for the burgeoning prison population.

As already stated, one reason for the disproportionate number of prisoners in the U. S. is the war on drugs. Mr. Liptak shows how much that portion of the prison population has increased. In 1980, according to Mr. Liptak, there were a mere 40,000 or so people imprisoned for drug-related offenses. By the time this article was written, that number had increased to around 500,000. One can only suspect that since then, this number has risen significantly.

Society has reacted to this war on drugs in different ways. We have been declared a high use area and our Member of Congress, Harold Rogers, has helped to create UNITE, so-called because it unites every aspect of law enforcement to combat the drug trade.

In almost every area of the U. S., prescription pills in the form of semi-synthetic opiates lead the way in illegal drug use. One reason is exemplified by the case of Purdue Pharma and its drug, Oxycontin. Here is a pain-killer produced to mitigate pain experienced by end-stage cancer patients. But Purdue Pharma’s sales staff told doctors that this extremely potent, highly-addictive, indeed, deadly drug, could be used for, of all things, moderate pain. This drug rates highly with those it has turned into addicts.

Talk about overkill. In fact, if moderate pain is all that a patient is complaining of, no opoid should be needed. Over the counter pain medications, such as Alleve, Advil, Motrin, Arthritis-Strength Tylenol, or any number of generic equivalents, are more than sufficient to handle moderate pain. And none of these medicines are addictive.

At one time, a tactic used to combat illegal drugs was to arrest the local dealers, and use them to get to the higher-ups, those who supplied the neighborhood pusher. If that was being done today, those responsible for fighting the war on drugs might find themselves in the board rooms of the nation’s biggest pharmaceutical companies.

After all, these companies are the ones who push doctors to write prescriptions for their patients’ ailments when it is clearly not needed. And it doesn’t matter how a pill is sold, legally or illegally, the end result is profit for the company that produced it.

Well, if you have stock in these companies, rest easy. Despite the fact that they are pushing their highly-addictive pills, law enforcement isn’t likely to declare them pushers anytime soon.

What would Fonzie do?

The Soviet Union was known as much as anything else for its intractability when dealing with ordinary citizens. When a decision was made by the hierarchy, there wasn’t much anyone could do except grin and bear it. The average Soviet citizen did have one recourse, though; their unflagging sense of humor. One joke went like this:

On the outskirts of Moscow, a dog saw a rabbit wasting no time leaving town. Curious, he stopped the rabbit and asked him where he was off to in such a hurry.

“There’s a rumor going around that all camels are to be castrated!” says the rabbit.

“So?” asks the dog. “You’re a rabbit. How does that concern you?”

“Try and tell them that” says the rabbit “after they’ve caught you and castrated you!”

If anyone can identify with what these poor, put-upon people had to deal with, it would be the tenants of the buildings that were demolished for the new judicial center.  No, it wasn’t necessary to tear down a whole block of historic buildings for an overpriced courthouse. There were other locations that would have been better, but the powers-that-be wanted it there. So, the wrecking ball has done its damage. The fact is none of those responsible for the upheaval in the lives of those who have been displaced have yet convinced me they care even a little.

The greatest sin committed by those who would have this location or die was that those business owners who leased their spaces were left with but one option: Get out! None of them received any help in relocating. Well, at least these entrepreneurs had ample time to find a new sites for their businesses.

Not so Ava Mitchell. Her building wasn’t supposed to even be in the way. Turns out the footprint to be put down by the Committee to Do Whatever They Want is going to be much bigger than anyone initially thought. Yep, another group of buildings will now be demolished, including the one that housed the Happy Days Diner.

Ava doesn’t own the building where her business is located. She leases. Accordingly, the above Committee doesn’t think she’s owed anything, except the 30 day notice already given her.

This looks a lot like "illegal taking". By this I mean that the business she and her late husband spent time building has an intrinsic value, and it is being taken from her with no thought of either helping her relocate, or of compensating her after forcing her to abandon it so quickly.

Too, the Committee, which has put in place conditions that will force her to close her establishment, is also costing her and her employees jobs at a time when any job is a scarce commodity. In addition, by forcing her to close this business, Ava and her family are going to have to seriously reconsider plans for the future that otherwise would have been secure.

No, the Committee is correct. But that does not mean that they are right.

In the meantime, when you visit Pikeville next, you might want to pay particular attention to those buildings between Main and Second Street. You never know which ones will fall victim next to the black hole that has opened up in what was downtown Pikeville.

A Road Not Traveled

In case anyone hasn’t noticed, Oprah’s come and gone again. Her show, now 23 years older, and presumably that much wiser, came into Williamson last Wednesday for a reprise of it’s 1987 show that was intended to showcase how America’s small towns were dealing with AIDS. Her purpose this time? To see if our attitude has changed noticeably.

The incident that precipitated her first visit could have been entitled “An Incident at a Municipal Pool”. It was a scene straight out of the film “Caddyshack”, minus the candy bar. You know, an avowed gay man, Mike Sisco, who’d been diagnosed with AIDS, goes for a swim, and before you know it, Williamson’s version of the Ted Knight character Judge Smails is saying “"I want the entire pool scrubbed, sterilized, and disinfected!"

Oprah subsequently stated that fear was the driving motivation behind the incivility directed at Mike Sisco, incivilities that culminated in this admitted overreaction by the locals. That much was made clear at the first show, that incivility in the form of rumors, etc., was the full extent of any action taken against him.

Well, this is certainly no excuse, but at the time, AIDS was a death sentence. And there was a lot of uncertainty as to how the disease was transmitted. No cocktail of drugs were available then to keep this condition at bay.

Anyway, this wasn’t the only town Oprah might have visited to gage small town America’s reaction to this condition. There were other far more egregious examples of small towns reacting badly to AIDS victims, and one example in particular comes to mind.

At about the same time the Williamson municipal pool was getting a scrub down, three young brothers, Randy, Robert, and Ricky Ray, then aged 8-10, and all hemophiliacs, had all been diagnosed with AIDS as a result of receiving clotting agents from tainted transfusions.

The difference between their hometown of Arcadia, Florida, and Williamson was that the people there didn’t stop with just rumors or other acts of incivility. No one wanted the boys in that town. And they certainly didn’t want the boys to enrol in the local grade school. For over a year, the boys were kept out. In fact, the boys’ father, Clifford Ray, was obliged to get an order from a federal court that forced the local school board to finally admit the boys.

But this did not stop the locals. The students at what would have been their new school organized a boycott against them. Meanwhile, concerned citizens busied themselves with making threatening phone calls and death threats to the Ray family.

The ultimate response to keep the boys out of Arcadia Elementary School came when someone caught the Rays gone one night, and burned the family house down. I suppose the Rays should have been grateful the arsonist waited until they were gone. With no house to live in, the Rays were forced to move, this time to an undisclosed new location in Florida.

Their oldest boy had nightmares afterwards. It was said that he blamed himself for his family’s situation. As for the townspeople, we can only guess they were able to sleep peacefully. I wonder if any of them has ever contemplated the real meaning of “Suffer the little children…”?

Other 9/11 Victims

The protests are continuing over the Islamic community center set to be built on the site of an abandoned Burlington Coat factory near Ground Zero in New York. If any of these protestors have ever passed the mosque that’s already operating four blocks from Ground Zero, none have ever given any indication of that. Nor have any of these opponents ever hinted about how they feel about a chapel that was built in the Pentagon shortly after the attack on that building that was dedicated to those victims. It is opened to people of all faiths, and on Fridays, Muslims worship there.

No, those who are opposed to the community center are centering on the idea of sensitivity to the victims of the attack on the World Trade Center and their survivors, such as Barbara Olsen and her husband, Ted Olsen. Ms. Olsen was a prominent conservative and a Fox News contributor. She had the misfortune of being in one of the planes that were used in this attack.

If anyone has the right to be offended by the idea of this community center, it would be Ted Olsen. But Mr. Olsen, who served as the Solicitor General under President George W. Bush, has, in fact, defended the viewpoint expressed by President Obama, which is that no religion should be forbidden from building a house of worship if they don’t violate any local laws. Furthermore, Mr. Olsen said “… we don’t want to turn an act of hate against us by extremists into an act of intolerance for people of religious faith.”

Why not? Perhaps Mr. Olsen knows that if we give into feelings of intolerance, mob rule is the result. And the result of mob rule? Hate crimes that don’t try to distinguish the innocent from the guilty. For instance, on Sept. 21, 2001, Balbir Singh Sodhi was shot and killed by someone upset about the 9/11 attacks. Mr. Sodhi was, in fact, a Sikh, but his killer mistook him for a Muslim.

Unlike Mr. Sodhi, Salman Hamdani was a devout Muslim. Authorities sought to question him about the attacks on the World Trade Center, to determine if he was involved. Turns out this NYPD cadet and first responder was involved: It just took some time to determine the extent of his involvement. Six months after the attack, his body was found near the North Tower. He had his medical equipment with him, and he died trying to help save the lives of others.

More recently, in Boston, a crowd misidentified a passer-by as a Muslim, and someone attacked him with the pole on which an American flag was hung. In New York, over the weekend, supporters of a group protesting the community center confronted a black man because he had on headgear that made him look like a Muslim. He is not. Though this did not end badly, it very easily could have.

Charlton Heston once answered critics of a plan to hold an NRA convention in Denver weeks after the Columbine massacre by saying that his group should not be confused with those killers because both groups owned guns. Neither should those who want to build a community center be confused with terrorists who happen to be of the same religion.

On Simply Being Fair

There is a questionnaire that has made its way onto facebook that asks a simple question: “Should we put a Mosque and Islamic Supercenter at Ground Zero, yes or no?” Since this query was posted by a group that calls itself “Being Conservative”, the no is the overwhelming choice of those who have responded. Well, these sorts of polls are hardly scientific in nature, so that isn’t really a surprise.

The real premise here is that since those responsible for the attack on the World Trade Center were Muslims, anything that smacks of this religion being anywhere close to Ground Zero is an affront to its victims.

The fact is, the proposed site for this building isn’t Ground Zero, but four blocks away. Still, this has caused a firestorm of protest by those who consider Ground Zero Holy Ground. For instance, a retired firefighter and father of one of the firefighters killed when responding to the attack, has been quoted as saying that since Muslims killed his son, he would be opposed to anything Islamic anywhere near this site.

The only trouble with this sort of thinking is that the casualties from 9/11 came from every background imaginable, and this includes many Muslims who were killed in the Towers or who, like the son of the firefighter, were first responders who died trying to save lives. And since this is the case, shouldn’t the families of these victims get to consider Ground Zero sacred, too? And wouldn’t it be nice if they had a convenient place of worship to honor their family members?

There are certain facts that are being overlooked in the heated debate that has developed over this issue and one would be the First Amendment: It guarantees freedom of religion, and this includes the right to be a Muslim. So, even if they were so inclined, no governmental entity can intercede.

Secondly, if four blocks away is too close to Ground Zero, then what would a more respectful distance be? In fact, if putting a Mosque up that close is insensitive, as many opponents have claimed, is there an etiquette that Muslims should observe? For instance, would it be okay if a Muslim visited Ground Zero? Or would that act be considered an affront as well?

Since when are we so angry at Muslims, in general? What was one of the reasons for the war in Iraq? Oh, yeah, we were there to help save Muslims. The fact that we may have killed over 600,000 Iraqis in this task is coincidental.

Where those who are opposed to this community center are mistaken is how they view the source of the attack on the World Trade Center. It was a terrorist attack, and was carried out by maniacs who were Muslim, but certainly not representative of the Muslim World. How do we know that? By the simple fact that every major American Muslim organization condemned the 9/11 attacks. They were joined by every major Islamic nation, including Afghanistan. The only exception was Iraq.

In the end, we really don’t have any good reason to deny New York’s Muslim community what we as Americans take for granted; a community center and a place of worship. All we need to do now is simply be fair with them.

When (not) to amend the Constitution

The aftermath of the Civil War saw the passage of three amendments, collectively known as the Civil War Amendments. The intent of these amendments, the 13th, 14th, and 15th, was to end slavery once and for all in the United States, and to insure that the freed slaves were granted full rights as citizens.

The political party that pushed these amendments was the Party of Lincoln. This same party today, it seems, now regrets its part in getting the 14th Amendment passed. The 14th Amendment states that anyone born in the United States is a citizen, even those who had been born into slavery.

There are those who believe the Amendment was also meant to clarify who had the rights of citizenship. A lot of immigrants from all over the world were entering the U. S. at this time, and it was unsure who had the right to call themselves Americans.

Fast forward to the 21st Century, and we now find ourselves embroiled in a great debate over illegal immigration into our country. Among those who are in favor of drastically curtailing entry into the U. S. are those who are sure that illegal immigrants are coming to El Norte to have their children here to insure they become American citizens.

The push is now on by leaders of the Republican Party, to include our own senior U. S. Senator, Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell and the Minority Leader in the House, John Boehner, R., Ohio, among others, to either change our interpretation of the 14th Amendment, or to rewrite the Amendment, so that the children of illegal immigrants would no longer have American citizenship conferred upon them.

The only trouble is, if you go back far enough, pretty much every American was an illegal immigrant at one point. I would exclude those who were brought here forcefully as slaves. They didn’t get much choice in the matter. But for a while, the doors were pretty much wide open. And people came to America from everywhere; from every part of Europe; and when laborers were needed to construct the nation’s railroads, from China, to name but two areas of the world.

Heck, Americans themselves took part in illegal immigration in the period prior to the Civil War. They crossed the northern border of Mexico into Texas and California en masse. The result was that Mexico lost quite a bit of its northern territory.

There are steps that could be taken to control illegal entry into our country that aren’t quite so dramatic. One way would be to address immigration reform in Congress. Not that this is likely. This is a perennial issue, one that no Congress has been willing to tackle. Those members of Congress who express a willingness to address the issue soon come back down to Earth, and abandon their principles lest they incur the wrath of the voters.

Does anyone think that we can succeed in altering our interpretation of the 14th Amendment? Probably not. Nor can we easily amend the Constitution. This issue has been taken up because its supporters believe it will resonant with the voters.

Anyway, it’s easier to pontificate than it is to come up with a practical solution to the immigration problem that will actually work.

Penny pinching in the New Millennium

I can sum up the state of the economy in one figure-$15.16.



One morning last week, I began the arduous task of preparing a healthy breakfast, only to discover that I was out of my favorite sugarfree pancake syrup, Log Cabin. I was also in need of some bovine wine, so I hit the dusty trail to the local trading post.



When I got there, I got the items required-two gallons of milk and two 24-ounce bottles of Log Cabin. The price? A paltry $15.16.



Let me tell you, it’s a good thing my father wasn’t making this purchase. He wasn’t cheap, but he did know the value of a nickel, and let’s say that in the day, the buffalo on the back of this coin did bear some pinch marks by the time it left his pocket. I can only imagine his reaction to what inflation has done to the price of groceries, and it might have been good for a laugh, depending on who you asked later.



The problem is this; those responsible for setting the prices for what we need to survive here in the New Millennium must think everyone is a millionaire. For instance, we have, since the aftermath of the aught-nine Christmas snow, been dealing with the possibility of a huge increase in the rates we pay for electricity.



Yeah, I know the good people at the Public Service Commission (PSC) axed that request for a 35% increase down to what they consider a more manageable 17%, but that, in my opinion, is anything but manageable.



Well, at least the price gougers at KEP had to go to the PSC and get permission before setting off their sky rocket. Other service providers aren’t so hamstrung when it comes to ratcheting up prices.



Take property insurance. These insurance providers can raise their rates up to 23% and they needn’t tell anyone until your policy comes up for renewal. You know, you think you’re in good hands, and whammo, what was reasonable suddenly is prefixed with an un-.



Yeah, we got the renewal letter, and a request to call the agency to prepare us for the shock that was in store for us, but I was still left battling post-traumatic stress syndrome. Our home owners policy went up over $300.00 on the year. Monthly payments went from around $68 a month to around $90. Talk about seeing stars!



Of course, I complained to the Kentucky Department of Insurance, not that I thought I would get any relief, but I wanted to remonstrate with someone official. And in due time, I got a letter from this agency that said those good hands hadn’t mishandled me, and that they’d followed the law, so kindly quitcherbitchin’!



They did make the mistake of including a number for questions or complaints, but when I dialed it up, the fellow from Frankfort began to complain about how much his policy had gone up. I told him he was getting paid to listen to me, not the other way around..



Yeah, we lost. The price increase was okayed. But losing doesn’t mean you gotta quit playing the game. You just need to find some nicer playmates. I did just that, with a new agency, and a kinder, gentler premium.

Some Pressing Flooding Concerns

So, another year, another disastrous flashflood event. Is it just me, or does it occur to anyone else that we’re getting into a bit of a rut here?



The first reports on WYMT’s web site about the flood saw comments that reflect the reality in which we live in this area. Someone suggested that mountaintop (MTR) removal might have been responsible. This poster was immediately set upon by supporters of mining, and the beat (down) was on.



I had it in the back of my mind that there was an MTR site in the woodpile somewhere, but until I had proof positive, I wasn’t going to say anything. And, since Google Earth is only one way to find out what Pike County looks like from the air if you don’t have a helicopter or airplane, that would mean using this app first.



One thing here; I don’t know how old Google’s images are, but there are ways to estimate. Take construction on new U S 460. These images seem pretty well up-to-date. So I’ll assume the rest are close enough for government work.



To get over Pike Co., enter Pike County, Kentucky on the “Fly to” space. When you’ve done this, you’ll be taken to a spot that is over Pikeville and the surrounding environs. From here, you can zoom out until you pretty much see the whole of Pike Co. From that overall image, it is pretty obvious that MTR is taking place.



South of Pikeville, sort of halfway between the big city and the Va. state line, you’ll notice several large, barren areas. Zoom in a bit and you will be able to recognize Marrowbone Creek road. Those large, barren areas are just to the north of the Marrowbone intersection and situated around the head of Jimmie’s Creek and Harless Creek.



Those at the head of Harless Creek all seem to drain into that creek. From the pictures published on facebook by the News-Express, and from the stories written about the floods, it would seem that Harless Creek was, arguably, hit the hardest of all the flooded areas. There was an incredible amount of damage done here, and you have to suspect that matters weren’t helped any by the large area laid bare by these mining operations.



Here’s the point; we may not know why these floods were so catastrophic, but the people who live in this county are owed more than just a rush to clean up and move on. We need to know why these floods came on so strongly and so quickly, and that will take a thorough, complete, scientific investigation. Every aspect of these floods needs to be studied in order to limit this sort of damage in the future.



It was suggested, for instance, that the floods around Raccoon Creek were exacerbated by the new four-lane U S 119. If this is so, we need to know it. If MTR mining has changed the definition of flood-proned areas, so be it.



We need to move as quickly as possible to protect all residents from any future flash flooding before we are hit with a real catastrophe, such as a rainstorm that drops that much water that quickly in the middle of the night, when everyone is asleep.

Weather, (not) Stories

Now and again, we are witness to ideas whose very nature changes the way we live, such as the Weather Channel (TWC), launched in 1982. This novel cable station proposed to do nothing more than keep us apprised of the weather, 24/7.



Well, like all good ideas, all it takes is a few years to foul the thing up. That has happened with TWC. It seems as though most weather is mundane stuff, and doesn’t keep the viewers tuned in as much as the execs there would like.



So what’s a company to do, to make sure someone is watching when the commercials are aired? Almost from its infancy. TWC was known as airing considerably more commercials than the average channel, traditional or cable. But if no one is tuned in… .



So, sometime back, when TWC was stilled owned by Landmark Communications, shows such as “Weather Stories” or “When Weather Changed History” began to air in place of dull weather forecasts. Later, when a group that included NBC purchased TWC, movies with weather-related motifs were thrown up on Saturdays as well.



Okay, at first this was no problem because of what TWC calls “Locals on the Eights”. This meant that at set times, ending in an 8, you could tune in for a look at local weather. Except that “Weather Stories” became an exception to that rule. But you could still get a forecast at the top or bottom of the hour. That is, until NBC, et al, took charge.



NBC has taken the idea of airing commercials to another level at TWC. Now, it has axed those “Locals on the Eights” during its “special programs”, and has shortened them so that the info is bare bones, to say the least. And it seems that when you most want some idea of what is going on with local weather, that is when you’ll find Jim Cantore relating the history of a hurricane or tornado or cold spell, etc.



That is what took place on Saturday, the day of that disastrous flash flooding, perhaps the worst in Pike Co.’s history. That evening, when the rain began to come down in earnest, I repeatedly turned to TWC to find “Weather Stories” on. And the show’s commercials took the place of “Local on the Eights”.



Outside, the rain was as heavy as I have ever seen, and I was worried, and despite repeated efforts, I could glean no information beyond that info that was contained in the crawl, in red, that warned of a flash-flood warning for central Pike Co.



I now know that I wasn’t the only one who needed vital information that wasn’t being transmitted. From the few stories that I have heard from survivors of the floods, they literally had no warning of what would take place. Some had just enough time to scramble to safety before their homes were washed away, while others, plucked from the roofs of their houses, lacked even that little amount of time that adequate warning would have given them.



I’ll grant that certain severe weather situations can take everyone by surprise, but when local weather could potentially turn that deadly that quickly, something at TWC needs to give. Then, it’d be nice to see real-time forecasts instead of “Weather Stories”?

SCRAM, Lindsay!

Hollywood and La-La Land, for the most part, would seem to have very little to do with everyday life, except to provide us with a little diversion from time to time. And that isn’t always via their movies.




Take Lindsay Lohan, for example. Not content to be in the public’s eye for her roles in films, Lindsay has decided that any publicity is good publicity. Currently, all the publicity surrounding her concerns a court appearance that resulted in a 90 day prison sentence from a judge who has apparently had all she can stand from what she views as a real-life prima donna.



All of this started with a drunk driving conviction several years back that saw Lindsay fitted with what is known as a SCRAM device. SCRAM stands for Secure Continuous Remote Alcohol Monitor. One of the conditions in the settlement in this case was that Lindsay could not consume any alcohol until she pays her debt to society. To ensure that she complies with the Judge’s order in the case, this SCRAM device, which does just what it implies it will, was attached to the actress, and it ratted her out when she either forgot she was wearing it, or just decided to chance it by having a drink, anyway.



Okay, it was more than that one infraction that got Lindsay a room at the Gray Bar Motel. It was her attitude that really did the trick. There was the matter of not showing up on time for court appearances, and her spotty attendance at those alcohol education classes which was also a part of her DUI sentence. All in all, Lindsay seemed to have the idea that she was above the law, a misconception the Judge seems intent on correcting.



Back to everyday life, Hollywood celebrities aren’t the only ones with the idea that their excrement isn’t odiferous. Anyone who reads the arrest records in the News-Express has noticed the number of people who are arrested for multiple DUI”s, and for driving on a suspended license.



This even extends to people who have either injured or killed others through their drunken driving habits, and, in one notorious case, saw the offender brag that he had connections, and wouldn’t spend any time in jail, even though he had only recently been released from prison after a drunk driving episode cost the lives of a young mother and her unborn infant.



So, the question arises, what’s society to do to protect us from the habitual drinkers who insist on getting sloshed and then going for a little drive? Obviously, the status quo isn’t working too well. These scoff laws serve whatever time they have to serve, and then it’s bottoms up, and on the road again.



Well, how about the Lindsay treatment? First time DUI offenders need to see the same type of sentence that this actress saw, one that forbids any consumption of alcohol, and a SCRAM device firmly and irrevocably attached to the ankle to ensure that they adhere to this condition, and those alcohol education classes so that they are fully informed of the dangers of their actions. And that SCRAM device should be paid for by the offender. Otherwise, none of us will ever be safe from these seemingly uncorrectable drunken drivers.

Working on a building.

One of the landmarks around Feds Creek, at least in my mind, was the old two-story block church building that stood for at least 50 years, about ¼ mile past the Feds Creek bridge on 1499E, on the right.

The building was fairly large, but consisted mainly of two large rooms on each floor. The first floor, which had four small rooms on each end of the building for Bible Study, was the home of the Feds Creek Church of Christ, while the second floor, vacant for many years, housed a fraternal organization briefly in the ‘50’s, if I am not mistaken. One thing I know for sure is, it did have a flag up there for a while with 48 stars.

Disparate factors, such as time and weather, all combined to weaken this structure, and eventually the congregation that met there deemed the building to be unsafe for further use. Buddy Hall, one the congregation’s elders, contracted a friend from the mining industry who had an excavator, and early one morning several years back, the excavator brought the building down, with a resounding crash.

To replace this structure, the members arranged to buy a doublewide building from another church that no longer needed it for that purpose, and after worshiping in exile for a spell, the new building was brought in and set up, and once some improvements were made-all done by the members of the church, by the way-the building was adopted as its new home.

But for those who have seen the congregation’s new home, it is all too painfully evident that not all the improvements have yet been made. Yes, the foundation is in place, but those little metal tabs which are meant to hold brick in place and shine so brightly in the sun, testify to the fact that these bricks have not yet been laid.

Well, that is about to change. As of last week, several thousand bricks were brought in, along with all the various accoutrements that are needed to successfully lay brick, and this week, members of this small congregation, will once again answer the call, and begin what will, no doubt, be a very laborious task, of bricking the new building before the summer is over.

This is, as anyone who has ever laid bricks knows, a very labor-intensive effort, and the fact is, those members who are attempting it, to put it politely, could really use some help. The easiest way would be to hire an experienced crew to do everything, but since the congregation is small, and since its resources are limited, this is sort of, well, out of the question.

Once upon a time, if a fellow’s house burned down, his neighbor’s would have a house raising, wherein everyone would pitch in, and a new structure would be in place in short order. No, it’s true that that hasn’t been done for a while, but for good reason; those houses were log cabins, and no one lives in log cabins anymore, do they?

Here, though, if anyone is willing to lend a hand, I wouldn’t think the church members would turn you down.

What’s in it for you? More than you may think. The Bible does say: “Cast your bread upon the waters…” .

Requiem for a Mountaineer

The state of West Virginia has a motto that more than speaks for its better citizens: “Montani Semper Liberi”. For those of us who do not speak Latin, that simply means “Mountaineers are always free.” Certainly, no one ever exemplified the meaning of that motto more than the senior U. S. Senator from West Virginia, Robert. C. Byrd.



That is not to say that Sen. Byrd was perfect; no one is. As a young man, Sen. Byrd made what can only be described as a series of puzzling decisions. For instance, he joined the Ku Klux Kan in 1942 at the age of 24, and expressed some very racist viewpoints, such as those in a 1944 letter to a segregationist, Miss. U. S. Senator Theodore Bilbo, wherein he said he would rather die and see “Old Glory trampled…never to rise again…(before seeing the country) degraded by race mongrels…” .



Although by his own admission, he left the Klan within a year, Sen. Byrd held some very conservative viewpoints at the outset of his Congressional career, and for many years afterwards. He even joined the Republicans in a filibuster of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and was an ardent supporter of the Vietnam War.



But his way of thinking and his ideology underwent dramatic changes during his congressional career. Of his more racist statements, Sen. Byrd said in 2005: “I know now I was wrong. Intolerance had no place in America. I apologized a thousand times ... and I don't mind apologizing over and over again. I can't erase what happened.”



And the Senator that was so pro-war during the Vietnam era was almost a lone voice of reason when President George W. Bush proposed going to war in Iraq. His attempt at a filibuster was rejected, even by members of his own party. But Byrd predicted that such a war would require two victories, the quick military victory, and a second victory for peace which would take many years and require hundreds of billions of dollars. Considering how quickly the President declared victory after the onset of hostilities, and yet how long the military has been tied up in Iraq, it would seem the Senator knew what he was talking about.



No matter what he ever did or thought, there was one group from his home state of West Virginia that Sen. Byrd always cared deeply for, and that was the state’s miners. After the death of 29 miners at Upper Big Branch in Montcoal, WV, Sen. Byrd made a rare appearance at a Senate subcommittee hearing, where he blasted claims by Massey’s CEO that it never let profits trump safety by noting: "I cannot fathom how (Massey) could practice such disgraceful health and safety policies while…boasting about its commitment to the safety of its workers".



To Don Blankenship, the Senator made the following statement: "Twenty-nine men are now dead. Dead. Dead, simply because they went to work that morning.” He then read the list of Massey’s many safety violations to its recalcitrant CEO, to refresh Mr. Blankenship’s memory.



Sen. Byrd’s senatorial career ended on June 28, 2010, when he passed away at the age of 92. At his death, he was the longest serving U. S. Senator/Member of Congress in the Legislative Branch’s history

It’s Started All Over Again

It’s Started All Over Again




Well, if you live long enough, you’re bound to see history repeat itself. Yes, there is that whole thing about “forget your past and you’re condemned to repeat it”, courtesy of a philosopher, George Santayana, that poorer history students might mistake for a general from the Mexican/American War. That doesn’t mean that these students are the only ones who have trouble remembering this, though.



Take, for instance, that Douglas MacArthur/Harry Truman run-in from the Korean War. This involved a heavyweight military officer, a household name, who oversaw the Japanese Theater of Operation in WW2, and who accepted Japan’s surrender aboard the USS Missouri. His opponent? A one-time senator from Missouri, of all things, who many thought was the President by accident.



To make a long story short, MacArthur decided the Commander-in-Chief (CinC) did not know enough to conduct the war in Korea. His criticism of the President was made public by a well-meaning Member of Congress with whom MacArthur had been corresponding. Perhaps he thought his rank, General of the Army, or his standing with the public, would shield him from any fallout. If so, he reckoned without considering who Harry Truman was. In short order, Harry called his man back to D. C., and gave him his walking papers. Big Mac gave his “old soldiers never die” speech, and in short order, faded away.



Fast forward some 60 years, and again, we find a highly-regarded military commander, Lt, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, and a lightly-regarded President, Barrack Obama. But here, the highly-regarded military officer did MacArthur one better. Not only did Lt. Gen. McChrystal dis the CinC of the U. S. Military, he went after other higher-ups in a story that was published in Rolling Stone magazine.



First up was the second-in-command. “ Are you asking about Vice President Biden?” McChrystal joked. “Who’s that?” Then the Lt. Gen. revealed that he also had trouble with the White House’s Special Envoy to Afghanistan, Richard Holbrook. Of Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, the Lt. Gen. speculated that the Ambassador was protecting himself when a memo critical of the war effort was leaked. And a retired four-star General, Jim Jones, was singled out as “a clown…stuck in 1985”.



But it was the criticism of President Obama that led the news coverage of this whole sordid affair. What is most surprising is that McChrystal revealed that he actually voted for Obama, but was “disappointed’ in his CinC when the two actually met. He also expressed some displeasure in having been reprimanded by Obama after he went public with his desire for more troops last fall.



McChrystal does show that he’s taken at least some of the MacArthur/Truman affray to heart. He apologized. “It was a mistake reflecting poor judgment and should never have happened”, the Lt. Gen. was quoted as saying.





Obama is showing that he has studied history, too. Like his predecessor, Harry Truman, Obama has summoned McChrystal back to D. C., to a high-level meeting.



Will the President dismiss his commander in Afghanistan? I’m tempted to say, no. Obama has shown that he is tolerant of dissent, and if he fired McChrystal, he’d have to break in a new man.



Better to keep an experienced man on the job, an experienced man who would then owe Obama big time.

Our Annual Report

Are you aware of the social sites on the web, such as facebook? These sites allow you to use your computer to keep in touch with friends and acquaintances, no matter how many years or miles separate you.

This site can also unite people who have a common background or support a common cause. Oh, sure, there are the mundane political issues, but there are also more appealing reasons to start a group page. One might be a common history the group members have shared, as is the case with the alumni of a school.

It was with this in mind that I started a page called “Feds Creek Yearbooks”. Because it asks you for it, I have stated as the purpose of this group the posting of every page of every yearbook ever put out in the history of Feds Creek High School. Keep in mind that this school’s history spanned the years from 1932, when the school was in a one-room building at the mouth of Motley Fork, to its last year as a high school in 2002, so this goal is ambitious, to say the least.

Not that a yearbook was published for every year. The oldest ones I am aware of were two published in the late ‘30’s. Two more appeared in late ‘40’s, while the ‘50’s may have seen no more than 3 or 4. This tradition of yearbooks being published randomly continued into the ‘60’s, although more were published in this decade. Still, ’62 was perhaps the first yearbook, and ’65 may have been the next. 1967, the year the school was runner-up in the region, had no annual, while 1969 saw a smaller edition of a yearbook in a paperback booklet.

Because I started the group, I also started the tedious task of scanning in my oldest annual, the 1965 yearbook. First the pages have to be scanned into your computer, then uploaded to an album on your facebook page. I included the front cover, then scanned each section of the yearbook in separately. Because pictures are arranged alphabetically, and because I wanted quick access to each picture, I saved each with a single letter, beginning with t. The second one as tt, and so on. This puts pictures together and makes uploading them much easier.

The album into which I save the annual was titled “1965 Feds Creek Annual”. For whatever reason, a group’s page won’t allow you to post separate albums. So, once the annual was completely uploaded to my facebook page, I then posted a link to it on the group’s page. I now have three annuals posted, the last being from 1968.

I plan on continuing until I have posted all of my annuals. The rest of my collection is from the ‘70’s, and I am missing ’71, ’72, and ’74. The rest will make their appearances shortly.

If you are interested in this group, log into facebook and enter the words Feds Creek Yearbooks. This will bring up the group’s page. It includes instructions on how to get your annuals scanned in for you. The cost for this could be as little as the price of shipping.

In the meantime, check out the group’s page. There are some memories that would like to see you.

Sombrero, top hat, or dunce cap?

By now, you might have heard something about a little oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. No, not the on-going one that British Petroleum (BP) is responsible for. We’re taking about one that occurred from June 6, 1979-March 23rd, 1980. It was in all the papers. This spill turned loose 3.5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico in just 200 feet of water.




How did those responsible for this mess respond to that crisis? Well, they tried the “top kill” method, pumping the well full of “mud” to stop the flow of oil, but this proved to be a no go. Then they tried the “junk shot”, filling the well casing full of assorted scraps to form a clog, and again came up short. Next, they went to what they called “the sombrero”, a cute little device meant to seal off the gusher, and allow the oil to be collected in tankers, and again failed miserably. In the end, the only thing that stopped this manmade catastrophe was a relief well that took nine months to complete. If you want to know what happened in the meantime, turn on the news.



What a wonderful learning experience this should have been. But it all seems to have been for naught. Not only didn’t we learn the potential consequences of an off-shore drilling accident, we didn’t even learn that no cute, sleight of hand tricks will get us out of a gigantic mess of our own making.



That doesn’t apply to everyone, just to those responsible for managing oil exploration in this country. In Canada, if you are drilling for oil offshore, you are required to drill a relief well simultaneously. That way, when it turns out you don’t you don't know what you're doing, it won’t be noticed for quite so long.



Not that the BP executives are alone in looking stupid. Some politicos are trying to upstage them. Bobby Jindal, Louisiana’s Governor, once a very vocal proponent of offshore drilling, is now alternately ranting and raving about, and then standing by, Big Oil. For instance, he will preach BP CEO Tony Hayward’s funeral one day, and next day criticize President Obama’s moratorium on off-shore drilling.



Sarah Palin, the ½ term governor of Alaska, has gone for a tried and true reaction to BP’s oil spill; blame the environmentalists. Yes, she said, it is the ban on drilling for oil in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) that drove BP into such deep waters. In other words, let us drill in ANWR, and we won’t get in over our heads elsewhere.



Meanwhile, Alaska's Senator Murkowski, is keeping a bill that would force BP to pay for the cleanup from being voted on. No one knows why. Or do they?



Those who normally think big government is the problem are now calling on it to fix the problem they’d normally leave to the free market to correct. Maybe they’d be alright with the Russian solution, a small nuke to seal the leak.



These people are even calling on President Obama to do something. Well, it ain’t like he’s got anything else to do. These people would know. So sure, throw another crisis on the plate. There’s nothing that requires his attention elsewhere, is there?

Here We Go Again

Have you ever read one of my columns and wished you could tell me what you think of it? If so, simply google the following website address: http://ripsnortinroy.blogspot.com/. There’s space for comments at the bottom of each column. Oh, and while you’re there, be a dear and click on some of the nice ads.

Now on to the business at hand. We are all aware of the warning penned many years ago by George Santayana, philosopher extraordinaire, that went "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." It’s a self-explanatory and trite but true adage that Santayana, in his later years, would tell over and over again.

The latest group who might have benefited from keeping it in mind could be those responsible for turning the University of Kentucky into a prep school for the National Basketball Association; Athletic Director, Mitch Barnhart, Et. al.

Mitch was also responsible for the debacle that became known as the Billy Gillespie years at U. K. By comparison, even former coach Eddie Sutton’s last year looked pretty good.

I could never get over the fact that Barnhart hired Gillespie even after he interviewed him. I sometimes even got the idea that interview might have taken place in one of Billy G.’s favorite haunts, and might have sounded like the conversation between Otis Campbell and Barney Fife when Deputy Fife was attempting to interrogate Otis after applying some elixir to facilitate that chore.

A. D. Barnhart followed up on that momentous decision by hiring John Calipari from Memphis, at the tidy sum of $4million a year. (And I thought that Tubby at $2 million a year was overpaid.) What did U. K. get for that money? A New York Yankees-style team, bought and paid for, that under performed at key points during the season. Oh, and a record setting coach, in that Coach Calipari has had two schools forfeit the bulk of a season's wins after making the final four.

What with the news I am about to relate, it might have been for the best that U. K. didn’t make that Duke game in March. Otherwise this might be the third school with that dubious honor. Yes, U. K. has a player, point guard Eric Bledsoe, who’s now under the NCAA microscope. And it doesn’t look good. It’s alleged that his high school coach during his senior year was paying the rent for Bledsoe and his mother, and that’s a no-no. In fact, if this is proved, Bledsoe could be joining company with Derrick Rose in having been declared ineligible after the fact.

Worse than that, if this is the case, U. K. is planning on the Memphis defense. (But YOU said he was eligible!) Didn’t work for Memphis, probably won’t work for U. K.

We can always hope that everything will work out okay, but from what I’ve read, this doesn’t look likely. U. K. may lose the distinction of having been the first school to reach 2000 wins, and fall to second place in the number of overall wins.

Well, I tried to tell them to hire Travis Ford instead of Billy G. way back when.  But would Mitch listen? No! Well, if worse comes to worse, let’s hope that the new A. D. at U. K. will.