www.dailycorinthian.com
Reece Terry, publisher
Opinion
Mark Boehler, editor
4A • Sunday, September 22, 2013
Corinth, Miss.
Martin’s music was one of the echoes of Sun-N-Sand When I saw the obituary for Joe Martin in the Jackson newspaper, my mind shot back to a place that only exists in fading memories from three decades ago – the old Sun-NSand in Jackson. Martin, 85, died Sept. 15 in Forest. A longtime resident of the Harperville community in Scott County, Joe was a professional musician. From age five, Joe Martin was a natural. He could make the bass guitar walk and talk and Joe logged a 60-year career making Sid Salter stellar music. Columnist Along with such jazz greats as trumpeter Al Hirt and clarinet player Pete Fountain, Martin was a staff musician for WWL, the clear channel AM radio station that could be heard across the Gulf Coast in the daytime and across much of the U.S. at night. His wife, Irene Martin, is one of Mississippi’s best known pianists and for many years was the official pianist for the Mississippi Baptist Convention meetings. In her own right, Irene has had a remarkable career as a musician and recording artist performing both religious music and standards. Together, their music took them to California and there’s another column worth of stories about the musicians they performed with, the people they met and the places they performed. But after returning to Mississippi, one of the venues where Joe and Irene and their musician friends played regular gigs was the Sun-N-Sand. The Sun-N-Sand “motor hotel” was the brainchild of R.E. “Dumas” Miller in 1960, who brought a Polynesian motif to the place. As I’ve written before, my reaction in seeing the place in the early 1980s was that it was sort of a dump. But in that era, it was the “dump” of choice for most of the power brokers in the Mississippi Legislature and at the same time it was the place that I learned most of the lessons of value regarding any reasonable attempts at covering legislative news. After years of reading about the nocturnal excesses of legislators the supposedly endless parade of receptions and dinners and cocktail parties that made so many headlines I was prepared to visit the Sun-N-Sand and see the bacchanal first-hand. My first visit there was at the request of a young North Mississippi state representative from Monroe County. Now a federal judge, Michael P. Mills was in 1984 a freshman legislator from Aberdeen. Former House Speaker Billy McCoy of Rienzi was also one of my hosts. I was expecting to see a bunch of drunken middle-aged men slugging scotch and chasing secretaries. What I found was something different. I found a bunch of married guys living in cramped hotel rooms, sitting around in their bare feet and undershorts eating popcorn, parched peanuts, hoop cheese, Vienna sausages, and sardines and crackers. A few had drinks, but not many and not much. Most of the rooms had hot plates, dorm refrigerators or other small appliances. As in most places where men are in charge of decor and housecleaning, the place smelled like a goat and was not in danger of making the cover of Southern Living. Rent was by the month. I went back many times over the years most unannounced looking for legislators I’d learned who to trust and who seemed to trust me. I ate a lot of sardines. I heard a lot of stories. Got a lot of news and made a lot of friends. The hotel closed in October, 2001. My friend and legendary Mississippi newspaper man W.C. “Dub” Shoemaker introduced me to Joe and Irene Martin during a break at one of their performances at the Sun-N-Sand bar. Shoemaker and I had been sharing a table with then House Speaker C.B. “Buddie” Newman. We were trying to talk politics with Newman, but he was far more interested in enjoying Joe and Irene’s music and watching the action on the dance floor. There were a lot of politicos that Newman only knew as “scannelbooga” (a word that Newman coined combining “scoundrel” and “booger”), but the most powerful man in Mississippi in that era knew Joe and Irene Martin by their first names. (Daily Corinthian columnist Sid Salter is a statewide syndicated columnist. Contact him at 601-507-8004 or sidsalter@sidsalter.com.)
Prayer for today My Father, may I know the delight of true friendship which is responsive and sincere. May I never feel so secure in myself that I will cease to want friends, or be so dependent on others that I will be continually seeking them. May I understand the value of having a stanch friend and of being one. Amen.
Sun peeks through war clouds? Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck is sometimes credited with the proverb, “God has a special providence for fools, drunks and the United States of America.” Observing the unfolding of the Syrian crisis, the Iron Chancellor was an insightful man. In August, we were hours away from missile strikes on Syria and involvement in its civil war with the possibility that Hezbollah, Iran and Russia would be drawn in. Seeking a way out of the box into which he gotten himself with his “Assad Must Go!” and “red line” bluster, President Obama announced he was going to Congress to get its backing, before bombing. This ignited a Middle American uprising against Obama’s war. Then John Kerry said Syria could evade the terrible swift sword of Barack Obama only by surrendering all their chemical weapons within a week. Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, watching the United States careening toward a war that Russia no more wanted than did most of Congress, seized upon Kerry’s statement and said: Let us work together to rid Syria of chemical arms. Obama grabbed the life preserver. To say the War Party is apoplectic at Obama for blowing this chance to get us into war with Syria, which held real promise of sucking
us into a war with Iran, is an understatement. The worst peace scare in memory Pat is sweeping Buchanan through the think tanks Columnist of Washington. Conceding the incompetence of how Obama and Kerry got us into this mess, are we not in a far better place than a month ago? —A U.S. war on Syria has been averted. We are not killing Syrians. —Assad has conceded he has chemical weapons and has shown a willingness to have inspectors come in and remove it. —The chilly, almost Cold War-like relations between Obama and Putin have given way to cooperation in getting these chemical weapons chronicled and removed. —While this disarmament may take years, this is a powerful incentive for America and Russia to bring about a cease-fire, truce or end to this civil-sectarian war that has taken so many thousands of lives. —There is a rising realization in the United States that the enemy in Syria is not Assad but the al-Qaida fighters and their allies. A victory for the rebels could mean mass martyrdom for Syria’s Christians and the annihilation of the Alawites.
—Hassan Rouhani, the new prime minister of Iran, has gone on U.S. television to declare Iran is not only not building an atom bomb, it will never do so. And he has signaled a willingness to prove it in return for a lifting of sanctions and readmission to the world community. —A U.S.-Iranian meeting appears possible next week at the U.N., which could lead to direct negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. There is always a possibility an incident could turn the United States back toward the bellicosity of August and put the War Party back in the saddle. But there are reasons to be hopeful. And that hope is not based on some naive trust in the truth of what we are being told by our adversaries, but on what their own cold interests dictate. Take Russia. A U.S. attack on Syria would surely lead to deeper U.S. involvement, the fall of Assad, the loss of her principal ally in the Arab world and her naval base at Latakia, and a loss of prestige at having been proven unable to protect her Syrian ally from the Americans. A U.S. war on Assad’s regime could also mean a victory for Islamists and their capture of some of Assad’s chemical weapons, which could turn up in the Caucasus just in time for the Sochi Olympics. Take Iran. She is suffering from the sanctions. Failure
to do a deal on her nuclear program carries a rising risk the War Party will get its way and the United States will launch air and missile strikes, leading to a war in the Persian Gulf. No matter the damage this might do to America and the global economy, Iran could be set back decades. A breakup of Iran is possible, as Iraq is breaking up. And what would an atom bomb do for Iran? The Saudis would acquire one, and the Israelis would put their hundreds on a hair trigger. If America was not intimidated by thousands of nuclear weapons in Soviet silos and on Soviet submarines, does Tehran think an Iranian bomb is going to frighten the Americans out of the Gulf? Take Syria. Assad wants to survive and emerge victorious from his civil war. That means no war with the United States. That means meeting the Americans at least halfway. In short, the United States, Russia, Syria and even Iran have a cold interest in no wider war in Syria. Unfortunately, powerful forces across the Middle East, and right here in River City, believe they have a vital interest in bringing about just such a war. (Nationally syndicated and Daily Corinthian columnist Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of “Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?”)
Climate change now ice-capped There is a tradition in politics that is similar to one in the legal profession: When evidence supports your position, make your argument based on the evidence, but when it argues against your position, ignore the evidence and appeal to emotion. The evidence is piling up that “climate change,” formerly known as “global warming,” is losing evidentiary support, despite recent “preliminary findings” by a group of “experts” from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that a Washington Post editorial suggests may prove, “warming has boosted the chances, in some cases significantly, that certain unwelcome weather or weather-related disasters will occur.” The Post and other “true believers” ignore or ridicule a growing body of evidence rebutting their beliefs. Most bad weather -- from hurricanes, which have been few this season, to tornadoes -- are unwelcome by those in their paths, but these weather phenomena have existed for centuries. Both sides seem to agree that CO2 levels are elevated, but they don’t agree on whether that will cause
Reece Terry
Mark Boehler
publisher rterry@dailycorinthian.com
editor editor@dailycorinthian.com
Willie Walker
Roger Delgado
circulation manager circdirector@dailycorinthian.com
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d a n g e r ous climate change, including rising temperatures and turbulent weather. Cal The NongovThomas e r n m e n t a l International Columnist Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) argues, “The human effect is likely to be small relative to natural variability, and whatever small warming is likely to occur will produce benefits as well as costs.” Yet the climate change cultists continue to focus on melting polar ice caps and “displaced” polar bears as part of their emotional appeal for government to “fix” the problem. Now comes a report in the UK Daily Mail that “eminent scientists” have observed a record return of the Arctic ice cap as it grows by 60 percent in a year, covering with ice almost 1 million more square miles of ocean than in 2012. In 2007, the BBC reported that by 2013, global warming would leave the Arctic “ice free.” Oops! Just how silly this is getting is an assertion by some activists that the current tensions in Syria might be
linked to climate change. That’s not as harebrained as a newspaper report in January 1933, which said, “YoYo Banned in Syria, Blamed for Drought by Moslems.” The Syrians of 1933 actually believed the up and down of a toy yo-yo affected the weather. If it went down and sprang right back up, rain. If it went down and didn’t spring up, drought. Police reportedly patrolled the streets, confiscating the toy. Ridiculous? Not as ridiculous as some of the junk science coming out of climate research circles today. Last March, the Daily Mail reported that global temperatures are about to drop “below the level that the (computer) models forecast with ‘90 percent certainty.’” Marc Morano, a former staff member of the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee (whose web page climatedepot.com offers numerous scientific articles debunking climate change), emails me: “As a long observer of the global weather movement, I can say that the events of 2013 (have) been one of the most devastating to the movement. Both poles have record expanding ice. Global temperatures have
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failed to rise for 15 plus years, sea level rise is failing to accelerate, tornadoes are at record lows, hurricanes are near record low activity ... 2013 may be the year in which man-made global warming fears enter the dustbin of history.” I doubt it. Too many people have too much invested in perpetuating this fiction. Billions of dollars and other currencies have been diverted into “green” projects in a Chicken Little attempt to stop the sky from falling. The BBC reports it as fact in virtually every story it does on the environment. Ditto the American media. Most media ignore evidence that counters climate change proponents. Former Vice President Al Gore has made a personal fortune promoting the cult of global warming, a cult being partially defined as a belief system that ignores proof contrary to its beliefs. Perhaps the climate change counter-revolutionaries should adopt the yoyo as their symbol and send Gore and his apostles a box of them. (Nationally syndicated and Daily Corinthian columnist Cal Thomas can be reached at tcaeditors@tribune.com.)
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