OK…. enough already with the Whining

OK. I, for one, have had enough of the whining from Democrats, the youngsters on college campuses, and selected media. Elections have consequences. Some win and some lose. Get over it.
I just read the totally whining letter to the editor in the Kokomo Tribune on November 18th from Kathy Skiles, the chairwoman of the Howard County Democratic Party. She trucks out all of the rhetoric and lies her party put forth in the recent campaigns. Even President Obama has warned us about false news reports and propaganda which Skiles clearly has swallowed hook, line, and sinker. She does not truck out the fact that at the top of the Democratic Party ticket was a person who clearly put this country at risk with what will likely be legally judged as criminal acts. She does not truck out the facts surrounding the rip offs involving the Clinton Foundation.
Hopefully, Congress, the Justice Department, and the FBI will not close the case against Hillary Clinton but will pursue full accountability under the law. All this unless, of course, President Obama chooses to issue a pardon to Clinton. That would not come as a surprise given the words that have come out of his mouth since the Democrats lost the election. Considering Obama is known to have knowingly utilized the Clinton server, he may want to pardon himself as well.
Lose the election the Democrats did. That was crystal clear in Indiana. Elected offices from the top of the ticket to the bottom were overwhelmingly won by Republicans. The Republicans hold a super majority in both houses of the Indiana General Assembly. A Republican governor was elected and the voters turned away the sham of former Democrat Senator Evan Byah wanting to become a US Senator from Indiana. The people of Indiana chose Donald J. Trump to be their President. They were tired of the same old corrupt ways from the Washington swamp as led by President Barack Obama, Senator Harry Reid, and Representative Nancy Pelosi. Off they go into the sunset.
The new sunrise in Washington DC is to be led by those with a new vision for this country. It is to be led by those who believe in America First. It is to be led by those who believe in the rule of law and that people in this country should abide by and be treated equally under the law. It is to be led by those who believe in American jobs first and trade that favors America, not foreign countries. It is to be led by those who believe in equal educational opportunities for all. It is to be led by those who put homeland security above all else.
The United States of America was declining in measurable ways due to wide spread corruption and ineptness. We now have a fresh start and a new beginning. It would behoove the whiners to get on board and contribute to the rise of the new America rather than complain, moan, cry and spew irresponsible, false, divisive and denigrating rhetoric to serve Democrats over their lost election. By the way, given her attitude and acts, Kathy Skiles should resign.

It's all about…

Here is what it has been all about in our part of the world for the last several weeks. Get the crops harvested…. corn and soy beans. The unfortunate fact, though, is that virtually all of it is genetically engineered and we really don’t know what the heccorncombinek that may be doing to us, our livestock, and the environment. All that we really do know is that these crops can withstand massive doses of Roundup herbicide without dying while the “weeds” around them do. At least that is what is supposed to happen. Problem is, though, there are now super weeds that survive. The solution proposed by the chemical/seed companies who are the promoters of GM crops is to up the ante for chemicals. Ummmmmm…. wonder who that benefits? They want to add 2,4,D to the mix.
Somehow I think commodity agriculture is a train wreck waiting to happen. I do not think we can continue to poison the soil, water, and air indefinitely without serious consequences to people and all living things in the environment.
We shall see if the Trump administration sees and understands these problems…. and then chooses to move toward a healthier way to produce food. Hope so.

After "The End"

November 8th came and went. The outcome was late made public but was actually known the minute the polls closed. The die was cast. Donald J. Trump is to be the next President of these United States.
I could not be happier! The crooked Hillary and Bill Clinton were vanquished. Their corruption, law breaking and influence peddling for pay have ended. The Clinton Foundation remains under investigation. And I hope Hillary Clinton herself will as well.
The ace in the hole they have, though, is President Barack Obama. I would not be at all surprised if he issues a general pardon before he leaves office. He has that power. Bill Clinton did a lot of the same for some pretty unsavory characters and criminals. We shall see.
History will write the Clinton era has ended. Thank God! The United States of America has been given a new lease on life. President Donald Trump will lead the way. Let us all hope that the GOP dominated Congress will not be an impediment but will support what Trump promised the citizens of the country during the campaign. The people (not the power brokers, lobbyists, corporations, and donors) now have a friend in the Whitehouse.

Dems and Illegal Immigrants in Indiana

The Indiana Senate Democrats just will not quit. An article in the Indy Star on November 11th says Indiana Senate Democrats will be pushing immigration-related legislation in this session of the General Assembly. You will never guess what cock-a-mammy things they want.
First, they believe illegal immigrants (aka. undocumented immigrants) living in Indiana should pay in-state tuition to state universities. They want preferential treatment for immigration law breakers over American citizens from other states. This makes no sense.
Secondly, they want to make it easier for law enforcement to find family members when dealing with “undocumented immigrants”. This would call for the creation of identification cards at yet another cost to the taxpayer. It is the responsibility of the undocumented immigrant to carry personal identification, not something the state should take on.
Finally, they want illegal immigrants to be issued a state driver’s license. I suspect most illegal immigrants are driving anyway and without legally required insurance; yet another violation of law. I guess I would be OK with this proposal if across the face of the license it states “illegal immigrant” in bold letters.
The election of President-elect Donald Trump and the tsunami wave of Republicans at all levels of government carried a clear message about immigration. That message is that illegal immigration and taxpayer services to those in this county illegally must end. There is to be legal immigration and care for citizens of this country first and foremost. That is the law.

The End is Near

There will be few words appropriate come next Wednesday….
“Thank God!”
or
“God, HELP US!”
We are at likely the most critical point in the history of the United State of America except for the times of the Revolution against Great Britain and the Civil War. Choose wrongly and I believe we are headed down in a race to the bottom. We have a chance to look upward once again if we make the right choice. Wednesday will provide the answer.

The Mighty Carp

It is time for something a little light hearted. My brother, Ted, likes to clip articles from various sources to send to me. He knows my interests, so the article contents typically support or challenge those. He and I don’t agree on everything, but do on most.
One article he clipped was one about the Asian carp, a fish now found almost throughout the United States but one that was not native to North America. Various carp species were brought to this continent from Europe in the early 1800’s. Not the smartest decision environmentally, but humans were pretty stupid about those things then. In Europe, the carp are both a sports and food fish. In Asia, carp have been a popular food fish for thousands of years. In North America, carp have not been considered either a sport or food fish. Mostly, they are considered a “trash fish”. That may be changing.
The article Ted sent says, “Asian carp is leaping onto table-tops in Kentucky’s finest dining establishments”. At a restaurant named, “The Ward 426”, the fish is served as “Kentucky Carp”. The charge is $24 for fish specially browned in butter and served atop sweet potato puree with roasted fig jam and mushrooms pickled in balsamic vinegar. In Kentucky, the carp are sometimes called, “Western Kentucky Silver Carp”. It outsells catfish whether grilled, fried, blackened or buffalo-style. One top chef compares carp to scallops and Chilean sea bass. For the white and meaty carp, chefs pay less than half the price of more expensive seafood such as sea bass.
Mature Asian carp average 45 to 70 pounds. Now there is a fish! The meat is white, clean tasty, and low in contaminants such as mercury due to its feeding habits. Carp are plant eaters.
But carp are environmentally destructive. This is a fish that when too many can really screw up the aquatic environment for native fish. This is a fish that lays 1 million eggs a year. An over population is a threat to native fish such as bluegill, crappie, bass, and shad. Oh, did I say that the eggs can be a source of roe or caviar? So, what to do?
The answer is for human beings in North America to eat up. A knife and fork will go wonders to helping the environment and enjoying a fish feast. The Mighty Carp needs to become a staple in our search for “sea food”. All winners for the environment and for the food supply.

Corrupt

When you think it cannot get worse, it does. The leadership of the Democrat Party and its candidate for President of the United States, Hillary Clinton, are as corrupt as they can get. Every day more facts emerge.
Thank God for Wikileaks. The people of the United States deserve to know truth. Without Julian Assange and Wikileaks, we would not. The secret maneuvering and lies would have continued unabated. The main stream media have abdicated their responsibility to root out and tell the truth. Many of them have thrown in with the crowd of corruption.
It is astounding the FBI found hundreds of thousands of emails on the laptop shared by Huma Abedin and Anthony Wiener, the former Congressman and sexual pervert. Huma claims she did not know there were any emails there. What she really did not know was FBI computer experts could dig deep into hard drives to retrieve what appeared to most to be gone. OOOPS! In days to come we will know more about the deceptions, lies, and corruption. Huma is in deep do-do. It is likely she will sing like a bird to protect herself. Very interestingly, Huma is nowhere to be seen on the Clinton campaign trail now. Before it is over, the life and story of Huma Abedin will be laid bare. Abedin has a checkered past including being assistant editor of the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs. This publication has connections with the Muslim World League, an organization effectively an arm of the Saudi Arabian government and one which according to its own web site “is engaged in propagating the religion of Islam, elucidating its principles and tenants, refuting suspicious and false allegations made against the religion”. It has connections with the Muslim Brotherhood. Huma Abedin has been Hillary Clinton’s most trusted companion and adviser. Any problems with that?
And John Pedesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman; there is a real winner. Wikileaks has laid him bare as well. No doubt, more will be reveled about his lies and behind the scenes tactics to distort facts and mislead the public.
Then there are Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Donna Brazile, the former and current Democratic National Committee chairpersons. Both are corrupt. Wasserman Schultz was removed from DNC chairmanship but then hired by the Clinton campaign. Brazile tried to run the sexism and racism cards when cornered about providing debate questions to Clinton prior to debates thereby giving Clinton a heads up so she could prepare her answers ahead of time. Didn’t work. Cheating at best, corruption more likely. CNN, the “Clinton News Network”, has removed Brazile as a “contributor” to its network.
Even President Barrack Hussein Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama are running for cover. President Obama is now effectively supporting FBI director, John Comey. White House press secretary Josh Earnest said the President thinks Comey is a man of “integrity” who didn’t do anything to “intentionally” influence the impending election. It will be interesting to see if the President and First Lady are now so anxious to be on the campaign trail for Ms. Clinton. The drama continues.

Dispatch Revived

The Kokomo Dispatch blog has been resting long enough. I chose to consolidate posts to the kentblacklidge.wordpress.com blog some months ago. Now I believe it time to undo part of that choice.
The Kokomo Dispatch masthead existed on a print newspaper for decades. It began as a local newspaper in Kokomo, Indiana, as an enterprise started by the Poynter family who went on to bigger things with the St. Petersburg Times in Florida. The Dispatch was purchased by my great grandfather, John Arthur Kautz. The Dispatch name was carried as a sub-head in the Kokomo Tribune until the late 1960s when the name was dropped.
The Tribune was sold in 1981 to the Thomson Newspaper group. At that point the Tribune had close to two dozen family owners, all descendants of Kautz. The family was in the situation where the death of one of the older partners would trigger a forced sale just to pay estate tax. The decision was made to sell. The market for newspapers was very good at the time, but the sale to Thomson was not good for the paper nor for the community. The focus went from serving the community to maximizing profit. Unfortunately, this was the story for hundreds of family owned newspapers across the country.
I want to carry on the Kokomo Dispatch name which was not included as a part of the sale to Thomson. I feel it is part of my history and duty. I think the Poynters would be pleased as would J.A. Kautz since the Tribune name was passed on to others.
It is interesting to me to realize how deeply newspapers and journalism are rooted in me. Some of my earliest memories are of times going to the newspaper offices with my father. I was around newsrooms, composing rooms, and the press more times than I can imagine. I can still smell the ink and paper and still hear the rumbling of the press as it printed the thousands of copies of the paper to be delivered to doorsteps. I remember.
After the sale of the Tribune, I changed course. For years I was involved with science and the academic community. I loved that, too. I was able to make a significant contribution in evolutionary biology. I went off, too, in other directions that hit dead ends. For the past 16 years, professionally I have been a licensed real estate appraiser in Indiana. This has had its rewards in that I have become very familiar with about all communities in North Central Indiana and have met hundreds of very interesting and good people. My vision as a result has widened.
For years, the voices within rooted in my decades with the Kokomo Tribune were muted. They have come alive. We are in precarious times for our country. Everyone who can should speak out.

For the Life of Me… NOT HILLARY

For the life of me, I do not understand how anyone would consider voting for Hillary Clinton for President of the United States. Her track record is worse than abysmal, most of which we would not know except for hackers, Wikileaks, and alternative media; not from main stream “news” media.
Clinton has shown herself to be a liar interested only in that which benefits herself, Bill, and the Clinton Foundation. She, along with President Barrack Obama, is largely responsible for the horror we see in the Middle East and the satanic radical Islamic terrorist campaign seen over the entire world. She is in the pocket of lobbyists, giant global corporations, and foreign governments. Now we learn that Clinton, in her own words, has a private position and public position on matters; one true and one lies. We know this not from speech contents she released to the public but from releases against her will by Wikileaks. Clinton advocates open borders and total free trade for the Western Hemisphere. These positions exemplify those not of a patriot interested in the welfare of the United States of America but rather one of a globalist interested in personal power, wealth, and world domination.
Hillary Clinton’s happy face and expressions of concern for the citizens of the United States are phony. She is seeking two things: power and money. She and Bill claimed to be broke when Bill ended his term as President and they left the White House, yet now they are multi-millionaires. That could not have happened on Hillary’s salary as Secretary of State and Senator from New York nor from Bill’s pension as a former President.
The record shows Bill and Hillary were paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by multi-national corporations and Wall Street for speech after speech. You know damned well the speeches were not that good. The payment was for influence, advantageous policies, current favors and favors yet to come. You know foreign governments, foreign citizens, and domestic donors did not give millions upon millions to the Clinton Foundation out of the goodness of their hearts. They were buying the present and the future for themselves. Get real.
Recently we learned as a Chancellor of a very large for-profit school, Bill Clinton was paid 17 million dollars over a 5 year period when Hillary Clinton was condemning for-profit schools. Bill resigned about two weeks before Hillary announced her candidacy for President. Hypocrisy personified.
We have Benghazi. This is an episode that will not go away. Hillary Clinton is directly responsible for the deaths of American citizens including the American ambassador. Hundreds of calls for increased security were ignored. The Red Cross and the Brits exited Libya but still security for our representatives was never improved. The military and CIA personnel that potentially could have made a difference were told to “stand down”. The United States government never acted to save lives. Only the few who disobeyed orders were there to help. But, “what does it matter, now” says Hillary Clinton. According to her, the attack at Benghazi was due to a video program. That is what she told the public at large and the families of those who died as they received the coffins of their loved ones. Hillary Clinton full well knew this was a bold faced lie. Cruelty personified.
We have the emails that went through the private email server in her home. Thousands have been released but the FBI announced there were an additional 15,000 heretofore not seen; and now even more than those. Clinton admits she had over 30,000 emails deleted so that no one could ever see them. The deletions came after a subpoena from the United States Congress which demanded preservation of all emails.  What did remain, however, showed classified information passed through her private server where it could be hacked by about any foreign government wanting to. This put USA citizens at risk and maybe even cost lives. That we will never know.
Evidence has revealed there was mixing of Clinton Foundation favors with State Department business. She lied about that. Now we learn a Clinton Foundation aide used a hammer to destroy Hillary’s old cell phones and that she had electronic records “bleached” beyond anyone’s recovery. Wonder why? When asked if she wiped her server, her response was, “what, with a cloth?”.  We now also learn that boxes of documents in the custody of the FBI regarding their investigation into the Clinton emails have disappeared.
When interviewed by the FBI, Clinton claimed over and over she did not “recall” much of anything. The most egregious was the claim she did not recall being trained on how to handle classified material even though she signed a form acknowledging she received that training. And as the Senator from New York State, she was even on the Armed Services Committee. So, more lies. Much easier to “not recall” than admit blatant lying.
In my lifetime, I have never seen such corruption of our federal government. This includes the FBI, Department of Justice, CIA, State Department, the Presidency and Executive Branch, and more. There is a move well underway to grab power from the people forever. If this succeeds, we will no longer have a country; at least not one the Founders would recognize.
I know why most Republicans will not be voting for Hillary Clinton. What I do not understand is why anyone identifying as an Independent or even a Democrat would vote for Hillary Clinton unless they are intelligence challenged, are like lemmings following their “leader” over the cliff, are expecting some taxpayer (government) freebie in the future, are an illegal alien, or just do not understand the difference between globalism and patriotism. I cannot think of any other reasons.
One more thing: in the State of Virginia it has been reported there are an estimated 54,000 illegal aliens registered to vote. Welcome to Hillary World.
We are at a historical crossroads. If we choose the wrong road, we head for unfathomable horrific times. Think long before you vote.

Trump Apology

Trump Statement 10/7/2016:
I’ve never said I’m a perfect person, nor pretended to be someone that I’m not. I’ve said and done things I regret and the words released today on this more than a decade old video are one of them. Anyone who knows me knows these words don’t reflect who I am. I said it. I was wrong and I apologize.
I’ve traveled the country talking about change for America, but my travels have also changed me. I’ve spent time with grieving mothers who’ve lost their children, laid off workers whose jobs have gone to other countries and people from all walks of life who just want a better future. I’ve gotten to know the great people of our country and I’ve been humbled by the faith they’ve placed in me. I pledge to be a better man tomorrow and will never ever let you down.
Let’s be honest. We’re living in the real world. This is nothing more than a distraction from the important issues we’re facing today. We are losing our jobs. We’re less safe than we were 8 years ago and Washington is totally broken. Hillary Clinton and her kind have run our country into the ground.
I’ve said some foolish things, but there is a big difference between the words and actions of other people. Bill Clinton has actually abused women and Hillary has bullied, attacked, shamed, and intimidated his victims.
We will discuss this more in the coming days. See you at the debate on Sunday.
Donald Trump