Category Archives: Eight Decades of Insights

by Barry Kelly | March 9, 2014 · 9:21 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 105

LAW AND ORDER

Law and order is a wonderful concept. Our way of life depends on the police and courts of the cities, states, and nation to meet their responsibilities of keeping us safe and our republic functioning smoothly. Throughout our history there has been no or little conflict between the forces of law and order and those of our war fighting forces. Other nations have had to learn to manage the conflict. The British forces in Ireland had to augment their colonial struggle against the Irish and the guerrilla fighters in Malaya. The French in Algiers. The Germans against the underground opposition in occupied Europe. The list goes on.

In America, we had no such experience. Until the Twin Towers came down we had no need to change our ways of keeping our population safe and our property secure. Years before, during my tenure in the White House as a special assistant to President Reagan, we were getting close to the limits of using law and order tactics against terrorism. In one meeting in the Oval Office, I remember briefing President Reagan on our plans to combat terrorism. In that period, airplane hijackings, urban bombing, kidnapping were the tools of terrorism. My briefing explained how we were focusing the forces of law and order on identified individual terrorists with the intent of capturing them, no matter where they were hiding, and bringing them back to America for trial.

Now that seems like a very conservative approach. But it was pushing the envelope then and there was serious resistance to violating international law from high level officials. Had I been wiser about looking into the future, I would have included in my briefing that we needed to start working on a more aggressive approach to the growing threat of terrorism. We were already past the comfort zone of using traditional tools of law enforcement.

Instead of focusing on a few dozen active terrorists, we now are threatened by thousands. Instead of a handful of terrorists awaiting trial in our system of justice, there have been hundred of terrorists captured. Most of them are captured on the battlefield; there is seldom evidence that can pass our rules of acceptance for use in our justice system. There is even a problem of where to hold them. The Obama administration has made it a cornerstone of their ideology to close Guantanamo Bay as a place to hold terrorists and provide them with a trial by military tribunals. Our attorney general and the president do not recognize that we are fighting a war against terrorism and the capabilities and rules of evidence required by our courts are not suited for trials of terrorists who are not American citizens and who were captured on the battlefield, fighting for no nation state and wearing no national uniform. I don’t even believe that the rules of the Geneva Convention were meant to apply in these cases.

So now we have the son-in-law of Osama bin Laden being tried in a New York court. Why? Is Eric Holder a control king? Do he and the president want to cut the military justice system out? Do they want to control the information that comes out in trials? It certainly cannot be on moral grounds. These are the same people who brag about killing terrorists with drone strikes. Being an American citizen doesn’t provide protection from drone strikes. Where is the due process and trial procedures there? The American people deserve an explanation from the president re his policy of pretending there is no war on terrorism and his practice of giving foreign terrorists who have been caught trying to kill us access to a justice system that until now has been part of our constitutional rights reserved for citizens and legal residents. I suspect the motivation for such madness is part of the extreme left progressive ideology followed by our civilian leaders. The core of this ideology is that if we show kindness and compassion to our enemies they will cease attacking us.

Not in this world.

By the author of the Jack Brandon novels. http://www.facebook.com/factsandfictions | @factsfictions80

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Filed under Alinsky, Conservative views, Eight Decades of Insights, foreign policy, Obama

Tagged as Barack Obama, Ronald Reagan, terrorism

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

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 104

CHAOS IN THE LAND

I wonder how many people when they hear the word “change” think of a new and better approach to individual and national problems. When I hear that word, I think, “hope and a better life are gone.” It seems that hope and change requires chaos as a required element of the way progressives bring about change. Our president isn’t very good about working on our issues, individual or national. Is it possible that a man who has won two national elections seems to be a reckless, incompetent leader when it comes to management.

Take Obamacare. It would take a battalion of Philadelphia lawyers to mess up the implementation of the Affordable Care Act more than President Obama and his minions. He’s been educated at our best schools, taught Constitutional law at the university level, given countless speeches, and served in the Senate of his state and nation.

Maybe he believes radical transformation of a long-standing national system of government requires widespread chaos as a midwife. When people are in despair over health care, lack of employment, a capricious and/or corrupt civil service, lost lives, and treasure in wars the president never explains or even mentions, the erosion of savings, a poor education system with no other choice for their children, welfare of the nation’s warriors, a government that no one trusts anymore, a national government that has lost respect at home and abroad, and an administration that destroys both individual initiative and American industries, they are ripe for change of any kind. We elected this president twice. Why should he doubt he and the progressive party can offer change people in despair will accept?

You would think the debacle of Obamacare, the rapid growth of the rate of spending more then we take in, the plan to cut back the Army to pre-World War II levels, the push to destroy first coal and then the rest of the fossil fuel sources, the thousands of returning veterans without civilian jobs or the option to remain in the military, the corruption in the IRS, that never seems to be investigated by the Justice Department or the FBI, would be enough to ensure a change in the White House in 2016. Not so. The growth of people who are dependent on government welfare, if incentivized to vote, will be enough to swing the popular vote to the progressives.

Don’t believe President Obama is inept. He isn’t. By his standards and those of Saul Alinsky, the progressives guru, he is right on schedule. The issue is never the issue. Traditional Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians and independents — you don’t have many chances. The 2014 and 2016 elections must be won by the opponents of the progressive party and its foreign ideology.

By the author of the Jack Brandon novels. This blog is meant to be shared and encourage dialogue.

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Tagged as change, issues, Obama, politics, Progressive

by Barry Kelly | March 4, 2014 · 7:40 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 103

PUTIN-OBAMA FACEOFF

Are Putin’s action in the Ukraine a surprise? I hope not, but for the group of amateurs in this administration, they probably were. Is there a foreign policy expert in the stack of dead wood the president depends on? Certainly not Secretary of State Kerry or Vice President Biden or the departed Mrs. Clinton. Reminds me of the surprise of the Carter White House when the Ayatollah was allowed to enter Iran from Europe. When have deeply committed religious radicals ever established a true democracy with regular free elections? I think the Carter administration was shocked when his followers took over the U.S. Embassy in Teheran and established an Islamic theocracy. When the Russians moved into Afghanistan, he was again surprised.

For centuries, the czars had tried to establish a geo-political foothold in South Asia. Through Afghanistan was the most direct route to a warm-water port and the riches of the sub-continent. Only the power of the British Empire thwarted the Russian plan. The Russians, seeing a weak U.S. president, made their move and thousands of lives were lost to add to the total killed by the Muslim aristocracy in Iran. History holds many keys to the future and weakness invites aggression. It has always been so. Now what about Ukraine?

The Ukraine was part of the great Russian Empire that President Putin wants to restore. Ukraine looks both east and west. To the west are its hopes for a close relationship with Europe to balance the threat from Russia. To the east it has a long border with a powerful nation that has shown its willingness to use its military power to achieve political goals, such as the forcible annexation of a part of the Georgia nation in the era of the Bush presidency. Ukraine’s current leadership knows it cannot afford a conflict with Russia without strong political support from the west.

What are President Putin’s plans? Well, even the Obama administration should understand that the recent upheaval in the Ukraine threatens Russia’s strategic interests. The only warm-water port in the entire Russian nation is in the Ukraine. This port is part of a settlement between Ukraine and Russia. Russia’s entire Black Sea Naval Force calls Sevastopol home. A large portion of the people in the area of Sevastopol are Russian ethnics. President Putin probably felt he had to move to protect his naval forces. The question is will he push to acquire Ukrainian territory beyond the strategic area of Sevastopol? He knows his history. There is not great love between the people of Ukraine and the Russians to the east. When the German panzers pushed into the Ukraine in World War II, many Ukrainians welcomed them as liberators. Some even took up arms and supported the Germans. Unfortunately, for those Ukrainians and the German Army, the German leadership treated the Ukrainians like the other people they had conquered. German cruelty knew no ethnic bounds in their drive to occupy Moscow.

President Obama has few options. One is to know that his plan to reduce the U.S. Army to pre-World War II levels is another revealing sign of his weakness. He should immediately re-think his destruction of American power. Peace has never come from weakness. A strong America is necessary for a path to peace. The progressive party is well on the way to achieving what neither the aggressors of both World Wars and the Cold War could accomplish. Our president is a master of winning elections but he is way out of his league when dealing with a man who is not afraid of power and its use.

If Putin goes beyond the securing of routine access to strategic Russian bases in the Crimea portion of the Ukraine and annexes Ukrainian territory, the Obama administration will maybe learn that words do not count for much in the constant struggle to maintain world peace. Weakness only feeds the actions of dictators. It does nothing in the struggle to contain territorial aggression. The willingness to maintain and use national power when necessary, sets apart real leaders from empty ones. Ronald Reagan was a real leader. Barack Obama is not.

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Filed under Afghanistan, Conservative views, Eight Decades of Insights, foreign policy, Intelligence & Politics, Obama, political solutions, Politics, Progressives, Putin, Russia

Tagged as foreign policy, Obama, Putin, Russia, ukraine

by Barry Kelly | February 13, 2014 · 7:36 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 97

FEBRUARY

February is a dismal month. Winter is still hanging around. Spring is still but a hope. If we could vote to abolish a month, I would vote to abolish February. It is only good for sleeping in and gathering strength for the rest of the year.

Politics in February are no better than the weather. The scary part is that unlike the weather, February politics won’t give way to a political spring. February began with the echos of a dismal, grey State of the Union address by the president talking about what he has accomplished and plans to accomplish this year. Talk about shades of grey. Nothing he has done or plans to do fills the people with the strength and hope that their lives will be better this year than last.

Class warfare and income re-distribution are not subjects filled with happy thoughts. The president may think February is the beginning of spring, but the people know better. The Federal Reserve will continue with a slightly diminishing monthly printing of money that will still supply Wall Street and the investment world with wealth but do next to nothing for the vast numbers of people who do not have the money to invest. Investors have done very well under President Obama but the people have suffered. Wall Street is not the economy. The President who is constantly ranting about the widening gap between the rich and the wage earner, is the cause of the widening gap.

While it is always springtime for the rich investors, it is always February for the workers, especially the unemployed whose buying power is gets less each month the Fed prints billions of new dollars that devalue both wages and unemployment checks. Please, Mr. President, stop talking Progressivism philosophy and free up the forces of growth from your avalanche of anti business regulations.

Start with the EPA who thinks it, not Congress, makes laws. Let’s back off killing the work of coal miners and put them back to work. Approve the pipeline from Canada. Stop listening to your environmental worshiping base who all have jobs. (We’d all be better off if more of them were unemployed.) Fire the head of your EPA who is a hardcover believer in the myth that human activity causes climate change. It is not science the climate warming crowd chants as it dances around dead solar units in the dark of the night. Of course the world’s climate changes: Remember the ice age when the site Chicago now stands on was under two miles of ice? Did our ancestors, what few, if any there were at that time, have so many fires that the rising gases from burning carbon warmed the planet and freed Chicago from its icy tomb? Did the Viking settlement on Greenland circa 1100 AD stop burning carbon material and caused the temperature to drop below the mark where agriculture is no longer possible? No, while climate change occurs, the cause is not human activity. The Progressives have to believe that human activity is the cause because, while they can regulate our lives, even the Progressives recognize they cannot yet regulate the sun, celestial orbits or volcanic activity.

May the political winds of spring bring back the slightly left-of-center Democrats before the Progressives (far, far left socialists) make them extinct.

By the author of the Jack Brandon Novels.

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Tagged as carbon gases, class warfare, Climate change, coal, EPA, Federal Reserve, global warming, ice age, Obama, Progressives, workers

by Barry Kelly | February 10, 2014 · 11:29 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 96 THE ADVISOR

THE TAKE DOWN OF AMERICA

The Advisor had been going over all his files and journals going back to the Nixon Era. He was trying to decide if he would be the first Advisor to break protocol and publish a book, anonymously, of course. After weeks of studying the Presidential Journals written by his predecessors and books published during the same time period, he concluded that some Advisors had used their knowledge of the President’s actions and policies to contribute to the open record.

He rationalized that if his sole responsibility was to advise the President for the good of the nation, it was within his authority to tell the nation what the President was planning. Nothing less than America’s future was at stake.

He sketched out a few pages, filled his pen and began to write.

The President told us when running for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States that his goal was to transform America. Many of us thought that the nation could use a little transformation. We didn’t realize he meant transformation to the edge of destruction and beyond. It’s not the end of America but the end of the America that anyone over thirty years of age knew and cherished. We also did not even suspect that the transformation would be accomplished by a policy of “the end justifies the means,” an approach laid out by Saul Alinsky, an American revolutionary and former community organizer in Chicago. Alinsky preached the “issue is never the issue,” meaning anything his Progressive followers, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton,did to overthrow the existing power structure and replace it with an income distribution social order where everyone got a fair shot was moral.

False statements, deliberate misleading of the American people, using all issues as tools to destroy the Republican Party and win elections are the right things to do. Old-fashioned morals like keeping your word, being honest and open, solving problems that advance American individual liberty, promote economic power and follow the rule of law and Constitutional restrictions were relegated to a growing pile of disregarded broken pieces of the separation of powers, states’ rights and Constitutional protections of individual freedom.

To transform anything you must first destroy or replace the existing order. The Obama-led Progressives (a more acceptable label than Socialists or Communists) have prepared America for an historical take down. The first step is to destroy the opposition. The opposition is the Republican, Libertarian, and Tea Parties. Only a few of the leaders of these groups/parties understand what Obama is doing. He doesn’t care at all about solving problems, foreign or domestic. He only wants to use the issue to destroy the opposition. Health care, immigration, tax policy, economic policy, unemployment, minimum wage, the use of the military services, counter-terrorism, foreign policy, energy development, environmental concerns provide a never-ending supply of issues to use against the befuddled leadership of the Republican Party.

President Obama is not a stupid or evil politician. He just doesn’t bring the beliefs or mindset that Americans automatically assume all their leaders bring to the Oval Office. He is certainly not a free-market capitalist. Nor is he a constitutionalist. He was not born of the civil rights movement. He is not an America First politician. He is more anti-colonialist, anti-war, anti-western with very strong elitist socialist leanings. He is so insecure in his American leadership costume that he can not stand up to foreign leaders.’

The Advisor put his pen down. Mused over what he had written and thought this sounds harsh but I believe it is true. I will develop these points as I continue with the book on the take down of America.

Meeting with President Reagan, Vice President Bush, Deputy National Security Adviser Frank Carlucci and General Colin Powell in the Oval Office.

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.Meeting with President Reagan, Vice President Bush, Deputy National Security Adviser Frank Carlucci and General Colin Powell in the Oval Office.