Category Archives: Eight Decades of Insights

by Barry Kelly | July 17, 2014 · 7:30 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 130

WHAT ABOUT YOU, CIVIL SERVANT?

Note: This is the first in a series of blogs that comments on how five and a half years of Obama’s rule have affected different sections of our society. This one takes a closer look at the lives of civil servants. Next: Retirees.

How have you personally fared in the first five and half years of President Obama’s rule? How have things changed for you? You probably feel your job is secure. The government is growing at a rapid rate. A lot of your friends are unemployed or in part-time jobs, but you aren’t. Pay is good. You get raises and bonuses. Your health care is good and you have been able to keep your government health insurance and your family doctor. Under President Obama things have been good. If he ran again, he would get your vote for the third time. No question you will vote for whoever the Democratic candidate happens to be.

You have noticed that the pressure to keep your comments within the party line is greater. It is like the Hatch Act disappeared. Politics are front and center in your working life. Whistle blowing is a dangerous profession. You are expected to actively support the president’s policies. You don’t need his daily direction. You and your supervisors know what is expected. If the president wants it, you will use all under your control to give it to him. You can read the tea leaves as well as anyone. You have seen what you know is true to be questioned. Cover-ups are to be expected in partisan politics where there is no room for debate and compromise. Partisan political investigations lead to defensive responses the other side calls cover-ups.

If the president looks bad, everyone on his team will suffer. You are either with the president’s policies or against them. That’s okay. Your management and the union leaders will take care of you. Like them, you do not believe the government is too big or that the government will ever be a danger to your freedom.

You will always vote for your self-interests. If that means leaning hard toward the president’s way, no problem. You work for him. You have friends in the IRS, HHS, EPA, DOJ, FBI, CIA, DOD, and many other units. They are good people with families to support. Just like you.

The House Republicans are loose cannons. They are trying to destroy what the government has built. The crazies are even willing to shut the government down. Without you the country cannot run. Don’t they realize how wrong they are? The Civil Service is the backbone of the country. Your job is to support the president and get his plans carried out.

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EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 129

IS THE PRESIDENT INEPT?

President Obama, photo by the New York Daily News.

Many people, including many political scholars and sitting elected officials, often describe the president as inept, clueless, unengaged, and a poor leader. Yet President Obama has bested them in every conflict. He lurks in a cloud of disinterest and mind-numbing bumbling.

If that is your image of President Obama, you are wrong.

Here is a man from a modest economic background. He grew up without family connections that would assure his future. Barack Hussain Obama was raised mostly by a single mother. He was surrounded by people who leaned far to the left. Somehow this young black man with a white mother got into and graduated from prestigious American universities. His grades are not public but we have to assume he was educated well. It is hard to attend Columbia and Harvard universities without embracing a far left political ideology.

At some point in this educational journey, he found his way to the teaching of Saul Alinsky, a brilliant American revolutionary intellectual. (Read his book Rules for Radicals if you think otherwise.) Both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton found their respective ways to Saul Alinsky’s revolutionary ideology by different paths, but both today are practicing progressives. (That term is one Alinsky thought was more acceptable in America than Socialism or Communism). Let’s agree that a stupid or inept man could not have gotten into and graduated from Columbia and Harvard with a law degree. Nor could a clueless, incompetent man make his way to the Illinois Senate, the U.S. Senate and finally become a two-term president.

The reason Republican intellectuals and elected politicians think he is inept is that they don’t understand the rules he plays by. They focus on problems and issues that need to be solved for the good of the nation or, more narrowly, their political party. President Obama does not focus on the same problems or issues. He is above that. Problems will always be with us. The proper use of problems according to Obama and Saul Alinsky is to use the issues that are associated with or come from the national problems to destroy your political opponents. Once you have destroyed the opposition and seized power, then you can fix America’s problems by establishing a one-party socialist government run by a progressive elite. The process is called Transforming America. Heard that before? Maybe from President-Elect Obama’s ordination speech in Chicago.

I believe the president must be astonished that his opposition has not yet figured out his game plan. I believe the progressive plan is so simple yet unique in American politics that lifetime politicians cannot grasp that Obama does not now care a whit about immigration, jobs, health care, education, foreign policy, terrorism, energy, military force size, debt, nor any other issue important to present and past political leaders. He or his successor will focus on those issues once they established a strong socialist state.

I have written the only book I know of that explains President Obama and the progressive game plan point by point or issue by issue. President Obama is not just a worse Jimmy Carter. He is a political type we have never before seen in America. He has no love or even an identification with the greatness of America and will destroy everything Americans have fought for since we arrived on these shores.

Read: INSIGHTS: Transforming America — Is this what we fought for?

By the author of the Brandon adventure/thriller novels.

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by Barry Kelly | July 16, 2014 · 7:30 am

by Barry Kelly | July 14, 2014 · 7:30 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 128

OBAMA AND THE MILITARY

How did we get to the point where soldiers are being given termination of employment notice while in combat zones fighting for our safety and freedom? This is a new low for any president, his secretary of defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

After both world wars, America cut back on the troop level and budget of the armed forces. Then the respective presidents and the citizens believed wars were finally over and we could rely first on the League of Nations and later, the United Nations though they are both international organizations with more promise than results.

We should know better now.

The need for current troop levels and budget increases is real. Islam radicalism is real, as is their hatred for all things western and especially the United States. The Cold War is not over. It never was. Russia and China present real threats to the economic and military power of the United States. Diplomacy, no matter the narrow view of the liberal progressives now in power, cannot be effective without real military and economic power. This is political science 101, the most basic of all principles of the exercise of power.

There is a pervasive myth that is part of the code of the liberal left or progressive movement. Social welfare programs cannot be funded adequately if the resources allocated to the military cannot be drastically reduced. They would rather have an ineffective national defense than cap or limit social welfare spending. The myth is easily perpetrated among a social political group that sees no need for the military and its exercise of violent power. The Vietnam War did not create this liberal group who devoutly believe if they are good and just, all other nations will also be good and just. This belief has been here as long or longer than recorded history. The actions of the left toward our warriors returning from Vietnam will never be erased. This is the same political group that justifies President Obama’s Benghazi actions and the subsequent cover-up.

We all should be embarrassed at the actions of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the secretary of defense. They supported the president in the Benghazi tragedy and the cover-up, knowing it was wrong. In a democracy, a Constitution that designates the president as the Commander-in-Chief doesn’t excuse any military officer or civilian officer for participating in a cover-up where Americans died without any attempt to rescue them. The Joint Chiefs do not have to act like mummies when they see the president’s secretary of defense destroying the best military force the world has ever known. They have a duty to resist and resign if necessary. Terminating the service of active duty military, officers, and troops while in a combat zone is inexcusable. There is no need for this. Funds can be found without damaging any sacred social programs. While the current debt is too high, the needs of the military is not the driving force of the national debt.

If the troops who are being fired for socialist reasons had jobs to go to, at least cutting the military force drastically wouldn’t be a humanitarian disaster. Thanks to the socialist need to transform American into a European socialist economy, there are no jobs for them to go to. Not only does this presidential action weaken America’s defense, it puts hundreds of thousands of able-bodied men and women into the ranks of the unemployed and hurts the morale of those who didn’t get cut. Chief of the Joint Staff, General Dempsey and Secretary of Defense Charles Hagel, where is your sense of honor? It is time for you both to resign.

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 122

The Myth

When I think about the number of our citizens who voted twice for the Progressive agenda of Barack Obama and who probably would give him a third or lifetime term, it is simply frightening. His supporters are not all from the have-nots of our economy, but he couldn’t win without their vote. Those who have bought into the welfare state from need, guilt, or a belief in the paradise that progressives promise they will build in America, will vote for the progressive slate every time they go to the voting poll. Why? What are the factors that allow the progressive myth to live on?

It is a popular version of the Robin Hood myth. From comic books, to classic literature, religious writings from before capitalism, to the barrage of film industry escapism, nearly all villains are wealthy and do terrible things to get richer. This story line is so deep that the celluloid actors and actresses who make millions from acting in these make-believe stories, with a few exceptions, provide funds and personal support to the progressive agenda. They believe in the myth that progressives can build a better society here on earth. Their zeal is matched by that of the people we entrust with the education of our youth. Great American universities have become the spawning grounds of millions of young people who have been fed the progressive myth, semester after semester.

Beyond conservative talk radio, a few television channels and an occasional best-selling book there is no counter-balancing message to the progressive religion. What is the essence, the core belief of this secular religion? There are a number of myths, but the pillar of the progressive church is the myth that human nature can be changed under a rigid leadership of a progressive elite. The elite can pass laws and regulations that will be enforced relentlessly until there is no longer a need for enforcement. People will now live in a society where the principle of distribution of wealth is not dependent on birth or ability or hard work.

There will be no exceptional citizens. Only the ruling elite is exempt from the rules and regulations. There will be no winners or losers. We will all be equal. Individual freedom is sacrificed for the good of all people. This is not theory. It is history for the few who bother to read about the paradise Lenin, Marx, and Stalin brought to Russia, or Mao tse Tung brought to China, or Castro to Cuba. There are many other examples. Several such communities were tried in America. All socialist, progressive, communist societies have failed or are failing. Whatever they call themselves, they all worship the same myth.

The essence of the myth is not complicated. Progressives believe that people cannot be trusted to make life decisions, develop and manage small businesses or large corporations without constant regulation and taxation to distribute wealth to all. To them, all entrepreneurs are evil, self-seeking people who want to exploit their fellow citizens by giving them jobs that further enrich the people who started the businesses. These business leaders then amass political influence and use their power to influence elections.

The major difference between conservatives and progressives is that conservatives believe that the larger government becomes the more dangerous it is to individual freedom. People who run corporations or manage large government agencies or departments are imbued with the same basic human instincts, love, greed, guilt, faults, and the rest of our human limitations. In the progressive myth, private businesses and market functions need extensive regulations. But government by a progressive elite, though also managed by people with the same human instincts, does not need any check or balance. The inherent good sense and wisdom of the progressive elite managers of government will give us paradise on earth.

An over-reaching corporation can be rather easily controlled and, at its worst, will not destroy individual freedom. In government by a perpetual progressive elite there is no individual freedom. Change often requires a revolt by the people. The progressive myth always has an ugly end game. The Obama regime is already acting like a managing one-party-elite. Have you noticed the IRS, Justice, HHS, the EPA, and other federal departments over stepping their traditional limits of authority and, most ominously, the unprecedented use of Executive authority ignoring the Constitutional role of the Congress? Do not believe the myth. It will enslave all of us. If you are a believer in big government, your conservative credentials are severely tarnished.

For more on the progressive agenda, check out my first non-fiction book: “Insights: Transforming America — is this what we fought for?” available at Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

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by Barry Kelly | June 29, 2014 · 10:44 am

by Barry Kelly | June 23, 2014 · 11:17 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 121

THE CONSTANT PRESIDENT

Once you break the code, President Obama is the most transparent president in my lifetime of presidents, starting with FDR. When analyzing what our president will do in any situation, I select the opposite of what I’m sure President Reagan would have done. President Reagan’s course of action was to deal with the problem so that America was protected and moving forward at all times. When there is a crisis, President Obama dithers and then does nothing to deal with the issue.

That doesn’t mean he does nothing. He uses every issue to push the ‘transformation’ agenda forward. Remember his ideological mentor, Saul Alinsky, the radical leftist revolutionary writer and community organization in Chicago before Obama wrote brilliantly that the issue is never the issue. Any side of any issue is used to destroy the opposition and seize power by any means.

Most of our Republican leaders just can’t understand a president that doesn’t do his best to solve problems. Barack Obama is not just a ‘worse’ Jimmy Carter. His goals include diminishing America’s power on the world scene. For example, I don’t believe President Obama is concerned about the rapid development of a Sunni Muslim empire including Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon. The power of America will not be used to stop the spread of ISIS. There is really nothing to stop their invasion from taking Baghdad. I’m not sure I would want American troops in combat again under our current commander-in-chief.

Think I’m being too hard on President Obama/ Once you understand his motivation, his tracks are easy to follow. He is a very different type of American politician. We have not seen anyone like President Obama in American political life. My new nonfiction book was written so every American could understand the progressive transformation and defeat it in the polling booth. There may not be many more chances to derail the rush toward a socialist nation. This book, INSIGHTS The Transformation of America, is a code breaker for understanding your president and defeating progressives. I guarantee that after reading this book you will clearly see transformation for what it is. In the progressive world there is no room for conservatives, libertarians, moderate Democrats or independents. Look for these groups in the dustbin of history if the transformation process continues under Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton.