Category Archives: Israel

by Barry Kelly | July 20, 2014 · 7:50 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 131

TRANSFORMATION AND SENIORS

Writers know they should write about what they know. In thinking how to write about the impact of President Obama’s transforming of America on senior citizens, I realized this is right in my wheel-house because that includes me at age 83. So I started with my own reactions to transformation.

First of all, I must admit President Obama gave us full warning about his plans for change. I didn’t support him because of his lack of any kind of management or leadership experience and his very far left ideology. But I didn’t expect the media to be so incredibly locked in to his socialistic view of the world. Nor did I think the Republican leadership in Congress would be so timid.

After five-plus years of unconstitutional growth in the power of the executive branch at the expense of the legislative powers, the speaker brings a whining lawsuit against President Obama for taking his toys. Who does he think will enforce the courts ruling if he wins? Attorney General Eric Holder certainly won’t. If the speaker had any courage he would use his powers of the purse given to the House by the Constitution.

A few days ago I wrote about another disappointment. The civil service in many democracies is a check on an executive gone too far. I may have been too hard on the many loyal and capable civil servants but, as a senior citizen with years in the civil service, I am dismayed at the way the employees of the IRS, HSS, EPA, State, DHS, FBI, C!A, and the Joint Chiefs have fallen into lock step to support the president’s unlawful policies. In a free society, government workers cannot enforce what they know is an unlawful course of action. I remember some trials after WWII in Nuremberg, Germany, that settled that issue.

Senior citizens have seen how the massive printing of money (bonds) by the Federal Reserve called Qualitative Easing cheapens their dollars while their income has not kept up with real world inflation. Medicare will be destroyed by Obamacare, as will the best medical care in the world. Sure, far too many people had no insurance, but that could have been fixed without moving rapidly toward a single-payer system and socialized medicine. Social security, which most of us have grown to count on, is less sustainable now than it was five years ago. This program needs attention now.

The rule of law is all that stands between us and a chaotic system based on favoritism and punishment without due process. This administration, especially this attorney general, enforces the law selectively and only investigates when it is in the interests of his imperial president. Many senior citizens have fought in wars, including the Cold War, and know the necessity of keeping a strong, well-equipped, and cared for military. We are nervous about the drastic reduction of our forces, the VA scandal, and the loss of respect for our views throughout the world. We have seen enemies who were impervious to diplomacy and endless talk with the threat of ineffective sanctions. We know America needs a leader whose word is respected throughout the world.

We are also concerned about the re-distribution of wealth, the growth of the government, the shift away from our close relationship with Israel, the so-called re-set with Russia, the debacle in Iraq, the rush to the good war in Afghanistan, the timid negotiations with Iran over the development of nuclear weapons, the anti U.S. development of domestic energy attitude, including the Keystone Pipeline.

Enough is enough.

Read my new book, “INSIGHTS – Transforming America. Is This What We Fought for?”

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 109

BACK TO AMERICA

Let’s pretend it’s November 10th, 2016. Hopefully the American people elected Republican president. We do not want to hear any “them and us” rhetoric nor anything about “saving the middle class.” We want the government to get out of the way of the middle class so those people can help themselves, as they are fully capable of doing. We do not want to hear any speeches with a class warfare message. No “fair shots” or “leveling the playing field” or “income equality” or excuses for American excellence or military power. Nothing should be delegated to internationalism and no more whining about global warming nor cap and trade.

Here’s what needs and should be on his or her agenda for the first year of his or her presidency to get America back on the right track (or at least off the wrong track that Obama put us on for the past eight years):

— Focus on the economy, and part of that is dealing with Obamacare. Most of it has to be destroyed. The next president should want to make sure all Americans have access to medical care that offers things like no cancellations for pre-existing conditions and allows sons and daughters to remain on their parent’s policies until age 26. People should own their health insurance polices, so they can take them from job to job. The IRS should be removed from the health insurance field and so should HHS. Insurance companies will be allowed to trade across state lines. Tort reform will be part of the plan. States will have most of the responsibilities. Beyond a few necessary functions the national government will have no health insurance management responsibilities. The new health legislation will be series of bills passed and implemented on a step-by-step basis.

–Immigration will be dealt with in the same way. There are enough bipartisan votes to deal with immigration one piece at a time. First the border is fixed so thousands of people crossing the border illegally is stopped without being killed. Better leadership at the top level of border enforcement is a must and a new justice department is part of the fix. We will not deport millions of people who have been here for years nor are we going to break up families. However, those who break our laws, commit crimes, or belong to a violent gang are out of here.

–A new bipartisan tax structure should be ongoing in the first hundred days. The speaker and the majority leader should select a bipartisan committee of senators and representatives who are not from the no-compromise ideologue wings of either party. Spending needs to be put under control and a growth-friendly tax policy is a way to start. The tax policy will include everyone. It is not a healthy economy that has less than half of its citizens paying all the federal income tax load. Cutting out loopholes, phasing out subsidies, allowing U.S. companies to bring wealth home without penalty, abolishing death taxes, and a tax code the average citizen can understand must all be part of tax reform.

–The energy policy will get rid of the regulatory baggage that is killing the energy industry. Some oversight is required, but minimal. At the end of the president’s first term, America can be a significant energy exporter and thousands of well-paying jobs can be created.

–A bill should be introduced that prohibits bailouts of private industries. There is a process for that already and it is called bankruptcy. The Federal Reserve is one area that may need more regulation. It is essentially a system of private banks that function without sufficient oversight.

–Social welfare programs gradually need to be brought into a solid financial status. A number of incremental small changes will have enough bipartisan support to pass without a inter-party battle.

–The education system is broken but it is not the job of the federal government to manage education. That function is left to the states and localities. Charter schools or vouchers to parents will be encouraged.

–The military force needs emergency funding to build up the force level, provide new weaponry, take better care of veterans, and improve the ability now to move and support military power. Strength and peace are linked.The G.I. Bill that provides college tuition linked to years served should be reinstated. Many nations, like Putin’s Russia, respect only strength. No more wimpy rhetoric coming off teleprompters. There is a real war with terrorism going on, so we should call it that.

–Foreign policy should be a function of the people assigned to the Cabinet. It should support democracy everywhere and resist totalitarian governments of all kinds, including those run by extremist clerics. It should be clear that unless Muslim nations accept Israel as a nation, they can not count America as an ally.

–Environmental policies should be based on strong scientific evidence, not on the ideology of bureaucrats.

–A bipartisan group of politicians, industry people, and academics should be called upon to validate or cancel current regulations.

–Judges should be nominated to our national courts who have demonstrated they adhere to Constitutional and existing laws when making decisions.

What do you think?

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Filed under class warfare, Conservative views, Eight Decades of Insights, foreign policy, global warming, Intelligence & Politics, Israel, Obama, Obamacare, political solutions

Tagged as 2016, Climate change, current-events, education, goverment, Obamacare, politics, President

by Barry Kelly | January 6, 2014 · 7:30 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS-93 THE ADIVSOR

PREDICTIONS FOR 2014

For the first time in all of his years of sitting in his underground office suite, The Advisor, more out of boredom than anything else, decided to put his predictions for the new year in his Journal. He opened the Journal to a clean new page and began to write.

I am just beginning my sixth year of advising a President who only listens to his own drum. He doesn’t like my straight talk. I believe that is my job to tell him important things that no one else will. As a result he seldom comes to see me. He has had a bad year and knows if he had followed my advice ,both he and the nation would be better off.

It has taken me a while to realize that he does not share my view of the nation or the world. He is like the utopians of our past who believed human behavior could be changed to fit a society based on Karl Marx’s axiom that ‘From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.’ The early utopians in their agrarian progressive compounds all failed, as have all the nation states that have tried the communist or progressive approach to governing people.

Does the President have no understanding of history? It is clear. In modern times, Russia, China, Cuba, Eastern Europe, Germany, and even the United Kingdom all have tried varying degrees of wealth distribution. All the economies failed and individual freedom disappeared when power ended up in the hands of a Progressive elite that used an increasing amount of raw power to coerce people into doing what the elite decided was best for them. There is no other way that increasing centralization combined with one person or a party elite exercising all the power can end up.

So my first prediction is: (1) President Obama will continue to push for a one-party government; (2) the Democratic party will lose badly the mid-term elections and the Republicans will take over the Senate. (That will be okay for the President for he believes two years of a do-nothing Republican Congress will set the stage for a decisive victory in the 2016 National Elections and he may be right.) (3) Iran will have a nuclear weapon before the next national election. (Anyone who believes Iran’s nuclear program is for peaceful uses or that weaklings can deter them by talk are very wrong.) (4) The Affordable Care Act will fail but not before it has done serious harm to the best medical system in the world. Once reconstructed the whole things will look more like Obamacare than a free market system. (5) China and Russia will increase their influence in the world. (6) Before President Obama leaves office, America will begin to feel the impact of unemployment, over-regulation, and inflation. (6) Lastly, radical Islam will show the beginnings of the organization of an Islamic Empire and the isolation of the Israeli Nation.

The Advisor put his pen away and placed the Presidential Journal back in its place. Maybe one of his successors would read it and find it helps them understand the years he was responsible for keeping the real record of every President.

This is a fictional account of an Advisor that doesn’t exist by the author of the Brandon novels. The author (pictured far right) has 27 years of Government service, including two years serving President Ronald Reagan (middle left) in the 1980s as an advisor. Meeting with President Reagan, Vice President Bush, Deputy National Security Adviser Frank Carlucci and General Colin Powell in the Oval Office.

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Filed under centralization, Conservative views, Eight Decades of Insights, foreign policy, Intelligence & Politics, Israel, Obama, Obamacare, political solutions

Tagged as government, new year, Obama, one-party system, Progressive

by Barry Kelly | November 25, 2013 · 6:56 pm

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS-90

From left to right (front): Chamberlain, Daladier, Hitler, Mussolini, and Ciano pictured before signing the Munich Agreement. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

OBAMA’S IRAN

When you badly want a deal, you get a bad deal. In the case of the “Peace in Our Time” appeasement of Iran by the Obama Administration, the President wanted and needed the fasade of a successful negotiation with the radical Islamists who run Iran. He needed a deal for domestic political reasons. Without the plummeting poll numbers about his lack of Presidential qualities exposed by the failing of Obamacare, America would have stayed the course to keep real sanctions on Iran. You see in Obama’s world all issues are domestic issues. He just doesn’t care about foreign affairs unless a world journey provides good photo ops and news bites for the American Press. Obamacare’s many slogans apply here. ‘If you like Iran without nuclear weapons, you can keep it.’

Not hardly. Again some history. When Neville Chamberlain made his infamous deal with Hitler in 1938 he was a hero to every liberal in the world. “Peace in our time” sounded so good. Once you could sit across the table from your adversary everything could be worked out. Except, Hitler was only buying time. Sound Familiar? When he was ready, his Panzers roared across the border into Czechoslovakia and later into Poland. “Peace in Our Time” was over. Chamberlain and the dangers of appeasement were exposed. Millions of lives later, the historical monumental mistake of Chamberlain and his liberal supporters was corrected.

I believe to improve his poll numbers President Obama has positioned himself as the American Chamberlain. Iran has sacrificed years of hardship to pay for the development of nuclear weapons. It is their number one strategic objective. No words by Secretary Kerry or President Obama will deter Iran from its goal of becoming a nuclear power and using that power to dominate the Middle East.

President Obama claims that if Iran doesn’t follow the terms of the agreement, he will ‘crank up’ the sanctions. It will be too late and neither Russia nor China will cooperate. China wants Iranian oil and Russia views Iran as a market for the sale of its weapons. Europe and the rest of the world are tired of the whole process. The time window for sanctions will very soon be over. As it was in Europe in WWII, the Jews will be the first victims. The vows of the Supreme Ayatollah to wipe Israel off the map are not just rhetoric. Hitler’s Mein Kampf wasn’t just a book either.

This is yet another example of the President’s word that no one should trust.

By the author of the Brandon novels. I welcome comments and urge you to pass on this message to your contacts. The above is the result of my own analysis, experience, and beliefs.

There Are A Lot People Comparing Obama’s New Iran Deal With a Significant (and Very Bad) Moment in History (theblaze.com)
Doc’s Talk: The Nuclear Deal With Iran is a Foreign Policy Disaster (docstalk.blogspot.com)
Obama’s Iran Deal: Worse than Munich (conservativebyte.com)
Why Obama’s Iran Nuke Deal Is a Good Thing (frontpagemag.com)

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Filed under Conservative views, Eight Decades of Insights, foreign policy, Intelligence & Politics, Israel, Obama, Obamacare, Poland, Russia

Tagged as Adolf Hitler, BarackObama, Iran, Israel, Middle East, Neville Chamberlain, Obama, United States

by Barry Kelly | September 12, 2013 · 10:53 pm

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 75-THE ADVISOR

FOREIGN POLICY?

The President had just entered the Advisor’s underground office. It was a surprise visit. The Advisor was alerted that the President was on his way down to the tunnel between the White House and the Treasury Department. The Advisor’s office was off an unused and restricted branch off the main tunnel. Access to the Advisor and the secret location was now controlled by the Secret Service. The existence of the Advisor and his location was the best-kept secret in the nation.

The President took his customary seat at the small conference table and said, “I need to clear my thinking about Syria and foreign policy in general. I don’t really like your advice but it does help me think through through problems.”

“Mr. President, my mission is to help you. If my advice helps your thinking about problems, that’s good. What specifically do you want to cover tonight?”

“A few weeks ago you asked me what I meant by the phrase, ‘Transform America.’ Telling you my thoughts re transformation clarified my thinking. Today I want to talk about my vision of America in the world.”

“I’m the smallest audience a President ever had for such a topic. I am honored. Please, your audience is ready.”

“People say I came to the White House with very little experience. To some extent that is true. My actual experience with managing huge organizations or in leadership roles is nonexistent. But I bring other skills no other President had. I was a practicing Muslim when I was very young. It is a very different religion from Christianity or any other world religion. More is expected from the believer. Free thinking is discouraged. There was no reformation in Islam. The individual, the family, and the Nation are all one. Islamic law is the law. Religion and country are not separate. I am no longer a Muslim but I know what they feel and think. I doubt if any previous President could make that statement.

“My father was not an American. He was a true Kenyan nationalist, as was his family. They did not sit around and hope things would change. They worked and struggled for change. To me change is part of the result of hope and struggle. I understand the process. I was also exposed to collectivist theology when I was very young.

“To me the sacrifice of individualism or the freedom of the individual must give way to the greater good of collectivism. You may think that this is a strange way to explain my foreign policy objectives. But it isn’t. In place of the individual put a single nation state. Now what is different? The freedom of a single nation must give way to the collectivist’s better world. America has dominated the world since World War II. The only change is that America became more powerful and wealthy while the rest of the world fell far behind. When I came to power the United States was the only super power.

“I believe that is wrong. It is wrong for an individual or a group of individuals to control wealth and power in a single country just as it is wrong for one nation to control more than its fair share of the world’s resources and power.

“My foreign policy plan is to gradually spread America’s wealth to other nations and to slowly weaken the power of the United States military to dominate the world. I do not want America to become energy self-sufficient.

“There will be no pipeline bringing oil from Canada to our refineries. Canada does need more wealth. The Muslim world does. If they cannot sell their oil, they will be lost. Buying oil from OPEC, borrowing money from China, climate control and Cap and Trade, pushing our manufacturing to other countries, keeping taxes high – all these policies are spreading America’s wealth. Domestically my goal is to destroy the ability of families to accumulate great wealth. Very high death taxes are the way to do that. But back to foreign policy.

“When we become a more humanitarian, less wealthy nation and reduce our stockpile of conventional and nuclear weapons, other nations will be more willing to join with us to better the entire population of the world. In theory the same process and theory used to spread the wealth among the American population, can be used to spread America’s wealth throughout the world. One world, one people, one God is not an idle dream. I know I can’t achieve all this in three more years but a series of Progressive Presidents, and Congresses can. I have always known I was a citizen of the world. What do you think?”

“Mr. President, if that is your dream, it doesn’t matter what I think.”

“No. I need to hear your comments.”

“You must know that what you have described is not new. It is an Utopian plan that has been tried in both small- scale models within the United States and in countries such as, Russia, China, Germany, Cuba, Eastern Europe, a few nations in Africa, and England. When people see the Utopia they sacrificed for, they haven’t liked what they saw. The problem is Collectivism requires management by an elite, chosen by whatever process. The management challenge presented by collectivization is too great for any elite structure.

All elites in history who have had total control over the economy, the people, the courts, police, and military have succumbed to corruption. The term power elite describes the problem. Mr. President, look at your own Administration. It is an elitist structure. Where is the transparency you promised? You are an elitist yourself. You know what is good for the people better than they do. ‘They will not be able to understand Ben Ghazi. So why tell them?’ All the unprecedented incursions of individual freedoms by Executive decree, the disdain you have shown for the Constitution and the courts. Your unwillingness to work with the Congress.

“I see I’ve struck a nerve. I am not trying to insult you, but I am trying to cause you to rethink collectivism as a goal, domestically and internationally. You may have some immediate successes but I fear failure will be your final result with great damage to the America you were elected to guide.”

“I thought you, as an old black man, would understand what I’m trying to do.”

“Someday, I’ll tell you my story. Thank you, Mr. President for being so honest with me. I do have your best interests as my mission.”

The President finished his coffee, stabbed out his cigarette and let himself out.

The author has 27 years of Government service, including two years serving President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s as an

advisor. Considering today’s volatile political situation, you are encouraged to share this on Facebook and to click the “like” button below. Comments and dialogue are welcome.

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