Category Archives: Obama

by Barry Kelly | January 21, 2017 · 5:57 pm

The Professor: Obama’s Real Legacy

“Welcome, class. Today it is my turn to pick an opening subject,” the Professor said to his honors political science class, smiling. “Two of them. The first is about the art and science of polling, and the second is my version of the ‘Obama legacy’ now that he’s no longer in office.

“Later in the semester, we’ll get some experience in poll-taking from one of my political friends. One of my basic rules of human behavior is that people do what they know how to do even if their experience is not applicable to understanding and predicting current events. That is what pollsters are doing today. The polling models to cover the election where almost universally wrong. The existing sample polled did not represent most of the voters. Polling depends on the relevance of the sample. If the sample of voters polled does not represent the actual voting pool, the results are going to be misleading. That is what happened.

“It will take time and testing to develop a more relevant sample of voters. In the meantime, the pollsters and their consumers will continue with the old model that the Trump campaign destroyed. Do not pay much, if any, attention to them until the polling innovators have time to develop new models.

“Now for my broad-brush description of the ‘Obama legacy.’ By now, you all know about my personal political beliefs, but I believe most historians will agree with my general points. Perhaps the most important part of the Obama legacy is how his tenure has moved the political center of American politics to the center-right. President Obama’s focus on transforming America by redistributing both individual and national wealth was a push to move America into a socialist economy. National health insurance, heavy regulation of banking and finance, energy, and manufacturing designed to bring the means of production and distribution under the control of a government of elite intellectuals all were pieces of the socialist mosaic. The other pieces were political moves to enhance the office of the president, weaken the legislature and move toward a one-party system by discrediting and destroying the Republican Party.

“He encouraged class warfare with his constant slogans of ‘level the playing field,’ ‘give everyone a fair shot,’ and ‘reduce income inequality.’ President Obama never missed a chance to play the race card in any police/community street violence and immigration issue.

“President Obama also presided over the weakening of America’s military strength and economic power in favor of international organizations in order to bring about a new world order from the vestiges of western colonialism. Perhaps, most of all, he failed to protect the nation from radical Islam and to provide both the hope and reality of increasing prosperity to our citizens.

“That’s my version of the ‘Obama legacy.’ Does anyone disagree?”

No students raised their hands, and the Professor nodded. He knew he had presented the facts fairly; he hoped history would do the same.

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Filed under class warfare, Conservative views, Eight Decades of Insights, Intelligence & Politics, Obama, Politics, Progressives, Republicans, Terrorism

by Barry Kelly | January 9, 2017 · 7:37 am

The Professor: Russia, Hacking and the Election

“Okay! We’re all here. First the question period. I know you see this as a chance to listen to me rather than the reverse. That’s okay with me. You know by now I’m not the usual teacher. I want you to leave this University knowing how to think and find solutions to problems. Part of that is to encourage you to think outside the box. But that is only part of the process of analyzing problems and selling your solution. You must develop an instinct to know when thinking inside the box is just as important. Most complex problems require both kinds of thinking. Why search for a new type of solution when there is an existing one that works well?

“So, who has a question they would like me to discuss?”

The Professor pointed at Alison and said, “Alison, let’s hear your question.”

“TV and the print media are constantly railing about the Russians hacking into our elections to favor President-elect Trump. It sounds like this is more about partisan politics than it is about Russian influence. What is really going on?”

“I think you know most of the answer, but I’ll tell you what I think. Great powers have been intercepting the communications of both opponents and friends throughout history. Hacking, as a form of collection, is at least five decades old. From a very primitive beginning, it has gotten much more sophisticated. The point here is that all powerful nations are engaged. So no one should be surprised that foreign nations will attack our communications systems, particularly those used by important people who don’t have the sense to protect their information. Hacking is not an act of war. A hacking attack on the national grid, the transportation system and some others would be. But senators Lindsay Graham and John McCain, who are making such a scene about wanting to punish the Russians and discredit the landslide victory of Donald Trump over the hacking and disclosure of emails associated with the Clinton campaign, are just over-heated politicians who can only be cured by term limits.

“These two senators sat through the entire tenure of the Obama Administration and, even with a Republican Congress, did next to nothing to stop the destruction of our military forces, the mistreatment of veterans, and the alienation of our allies. Closing of Guantanamo Bay and stopping Trump seems to be their main agenda.

“The Obama intelligence organizations have decided that the Russians were attempting to influence the election by releasing hacked items from Democratic email servers. President-elect Trump doesn’t trust their analysis. He shouldn’t. These are the ranking officials that lied about the Benghazi ‘talking points,’ refused to conduct a real investigation of Hillary Clinton’s illegal server and the consequent mishandling of highly classified material, and produced intelligence on ISIS to fit the White House view of them as the junior varsity. Are these people to be trusted? I think not. The rank and file of the several intelligence organizations are solid, hard-working men and women who take incredible personal risks to serve the nation, but their leadership is suspect.

“I don’t believe anyone in the Obama Administration wants a real investigation of Russian, Chinese or other hackers. Too much would be uncovered, such as what classified material did these hackers get from the Clinton email server.

“Bottom line is that what is going on is a failed President leaving office and trying to rewrite his record and constrain his successor.”

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Filed under Barry Kelly, Clinton, Conservative views, democrats, Eight Decades of Insights, Intelligence & Politics, ISIS, Obama, political solutions, Progressives, Republicans, Russia, trump

Tagged as hacking, Obama, Russia, trump

by Barry Kelly | December 22, 2016 · 7:39 am

The Professor: What Does the Election Mean?

“Before I start this morning session, do you have any fundamental questions to ask?”

Several hands were raised, and the Professor nodded at Carlos, who asked, “What does this election mean in the context of two-party government in the coming decade?”

“A good but very broad question. The Democrats or Progressives who now control the party picked a very poor candidate who had poor people skills and a heavy load of not very acceptable baggage. The Democratic message was more of the same, even though it was clear most Americans thought the Obama Administration was on the wrong course. People wanted to take a chance on change and Hillary Clinton offered more of the same.

“In its desire to push a very socialist agenda, the Democratic Party lost touch with the people, who I believe were fed up with the ideology of both the right and the left. President-elect Trump presented the people with a pragmatic approach. A decade ago, he could have fit into either party. This man made his fortune by recognizing problems and working to solve them. With him, ‘the issue is always the issue,’ unlike both Obama and Clinton who follow Saul Alinsky’s axiom that ‘the issue is never the issue.’ The difference is that the Alinsky Progressives were focused on seizing power to bring about a transformational distribution of wealth; people like Trump were about solving problems and making things work.

“This landslide election is a rejection of the Progressive socialist ideology and a return of the voters to a more central political position. If the Democrats continue to push a socialist agenda in 2020, the party will self-destruct. But there will always be nearly half of the citizens holding on to an embedded belief that being rich is bad and that peace is achieved not through strength but through understanding and appeasement. To them there is no need for a strong military or a strong national economy.

“These people believe President Obama’s deliberate weakening of the military and his total focus on distributing wealth nationally and internationally were needed steps to bring about equality and social justice in both America and the world. This belief is rooted in two primary drives. One is the distrust of European immigrants for wealth and corrupt aristocratic government. Our history has seen the establishment and demise of several local communes based on the philosophy of ‘from each according to their ability and to each depending their need.’ The other is the emphasis the Christian religion puts on the message of love, forgiveness, the evil of wealth, and the belief that peace and justice come from treating other people and nations the way you would like them to treat you. That is a wonderful belief for individuals dealing with others, but it doesn’t work on a larger scale or between nations. Instead, it results in the development of elite leadership and the use of force. The use of coercion to achieve social change and economic functioning has always resulted in elite rule and the loss of individual choice. Nevertheless, the ‘have-nots’ of any society have always resented the ‘haves’ and will be attracted to the slogans of the socialists championing ‘a fair shot for everyone,’ ‘income equality,’ and ‘a balanced playing field.’

“In our last three presidential elections, more than half of the people have voted for a candidate pushing the same old slogans. The problem for the Trump Administration will be to mix governing with pragmatism and a populist message. All our citizens must see they are sharing the better life.

“Otherwise, it will be an even sharper turn toward the hate-America, guilt-driven governing philosophy of the Obama/Clinton era. I’m not sure we can continue to pull back from the progressive abyss so much of our world has fallen into.

“Personally, I am pleased and excited by the possibilities of a new administration. You will all have to work hard to lead our nation between the excesses of both the left and the right of our two-party system of government. Both contain the seeds of tyranny. There is a place in the center that is right for us.”

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The Professor – What is Freedom?

The Professor was going over his file of past lectures and editorials to get ready for his next honors class. He felt that he had to get the class thinking in more basic terms. The hubris dominating this political campaign was driving out the discussions on basic issues that are critical to the survival of democracy, much the same way “Gresham’s Law” states that “bad” currency of questionable value will drive ‘good’ currency out of circulation. Certainly old and alleged sexual charges and published purloined emails have dominated this campaign, he thought.

If citizens do not know what freedom is, how can they protect it or even know if they have lost it? Freedom is the existence of individual choices. Without individual choices, there is no freedom. Those who have lived seven or eight decades have seen, sometimes up close and personal, societies in which the basic choices Americans exercise every day were unheard of or imagined. Current Russia and the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, China, Cuba, Vietnam, and some South American nations have tried various far-left ideologies. In every one of them, individual choices vanished.

North Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh, probably the best political organizer of the 20th century, had the North Vietnamese people organized into to a cascading staircase of political, economic, and social organizations. Everyone belonged to a peer organization with each peer group sending a delegate to the next higher group. There was no real individual choice.

Progressives and communists hate what capitalism and the free market stand for. They do not believe the forces of the free market are real and think greed is the only driving force of capitalism. Progressives will not believe the infinite number of choices made by a free people in a free competitive economy will result only in chaos. Instead, a small group of progressives can make decisions that will produce a vastly more efficient economy and much fairer distribution of wealth.

When you think about freedom, think about if the right of making choices is being taken from you and your family. Don’t be taken in by the words. They don’t mean anything. Look for the signs of freedom being eroded. Do government spokespeople tell the truth, or is their intent to mislead the people? Are there attempts to label dissenters as dangers to be silenced?

A few examples: The Clinton/Obama Administration’s desire to label people who do not believe manmade carbons cause climate change as “climate deniers.” The Administration is reported to have asked the Department of Justice to see if citizens who disagree with the cause of climate variations could be prosecuted. The Benghazi talking points, the benefits of the Iran deal, the claims for Obamacare, the misleading unemployment numbers, and the optimistic reports of the demise of ISIS are other examples of a government that is devoted to managing reports to the citizens.

The very essence of progressivism is to control choice because the political left believes it is chaos when people are free to choose their life’s occupation, their education, reading material, TV programs, news, religion, ways of raising children (including the choice to have children or not), health care, and the people who govern them. The current struggle in America between conservatives and liberals (the far-left liberals are progressives who now control the Democratic Party) is not over some obscure political difference. It is over who makes life’s choices, you or a progressive elite.

The Professor’s op-ed on the Middle East and the U.S.

In between honors classes one day, the Professor thought, “I just can’t stand it any longer. No one is telling the people the truth about the Middle East. Does the Obama Administration and the Clinton campaign think we are too dumb? Trump’s instincts are good, but he needs to bone up on the area. The Russians are not in the Middle East to fight ISIS and Putin is not about to make any deals that do not further his plan to hold a naval base on the Mediterranean and to be a major on the ground player in the oil patch. I just have to write an op-ed piece.”

He pulled his keyboard toward him, looked out over the bay, and began to write.

First, there are a couple of truths about our strategic past in the Middle East. Forget the lines and names drawn on maps of the Middle East. Think of the area divided between the Sunni Muslims and the Shia Muslims with the nation of Israel maintaining a stronghold in the midst of the struggle for dominance by the Shia and Sunnis. The Iranians are the leaders of the Shias and the Saudis, Arabs of the Gulf States and Egypt leading the Sunni opposition.

ISIS, al-Qaeda and their splinter groups are Sunni. The Obama-Clinton group has thrown American support to the Iranians, who want to use their new power to dominate the Middle East. President Obama always intended to follow the Shia/Iranian lead. That is why the abrupt pullout of U.S. troops from Iraq as soon as Obama came to power. The Iranians wanted the U.S. forces out of Iraq so that the Iraqi Shia could assume full control over the Iraqi military and economy and oust Sunnis from the military and government. (Remember, the Iraqi led Sunni government under Saddam Hussein fought a very bloody war against the Iranians.)

The Iraqi Shia government is now firmly allied with Iran. This is a government in name only. Iranians control all major moves in their drive to control a Shia empire of what is now Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. ISIS with all the terrible atrocities they have committed represented Sunni opposition to Iranian strategic goals. When they are destroyed, the strongest power on the ground will be Iran. When Mosel falls, it will be with the heavy involvement of Iranian weapons and ground forces. The Turks will stay within their territory and the only other viable fighting force, the Kurds, will be isolated with dreams of their own homeland shattered. With all of the talk from Washington about arming the Kurds, we never did. The Iranians and the Turks do not want the Kurds to be armed with modern weapons. All the arms we said were being sent to the Kurds went through the Baghdad Shia government that never sent them onward. The Obama Administration, of course, knew the Kurds would never receive the weapons. There is literally nothing the Iranians want that the Obama/Clinton group will not do their best to supply. Just look at the recent deal Obama made with Iran on their nuclear weapons program. While not called a treaty, that was what this deal is. Why take that route? Simply a way to avoid the need for Congressional ratification. We, the people, and Congress still have not seen all the pieces of this executive action.

On the Russian side, Putin is a modern day czar of Russia. His goal is to re-establish as much of the old Soviet Empire as possible. The weakness of the Obama presidency has given him a grand opening. For many centuries, Russian czars dreamed and planned to acquire a warm-water port for their navy. Without firing a shot or endangering Russian soldiers, he has acquired Tartus in Syria as a Russian warm-water port. That is now a fact. The fleet is there and weapons to defend it are in place. Putin will do what he must to support Assad. He is not in Syria to fight ISIS. Aleppo is the only evidence anyone should need. ISIS was not there but Syrian anti-Assad forces were. The city is now rubble as a result of Russian historic lack of concern for collateral deaths when their critical national interests are involved. Since Iran is the local protector and supporter of Assad and Syria, Putin will make any deal necessary with Iran to protect his naval base at Tartus and his new role in Middle Eastern oil. Obama’s plan for Iranian hegemony in the Middle East is on solid ground with both U.S. and Russia supporting Iran and the Shia Muslims.