Category Archives: Progressives

by | September 18, 2014 · 7:30 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS – 154

OBAMA’S SCORECARD – PART 2

It will soon be six years since Barack Obama was elected president of the United States. The traditional way of evaluating a president is to judge how he has done as a leader to solve problems concerning the economy, national security, and foreign policy. We could do that here, but that wouldn’t be addressing what President Obama has been doing. To be fair, he should be scored on what he has been working to accomplish. To do that, we have to use the tasks relevant to progressive goals, for those are what is important to President Obama and his legacy.

President Obama’s overall goal is the transformation of America. That term means very little unless you examine the steps that are required in the process of transformation. The first step is to marginalize his opposition, the Republican Party, by a skillful manipulation of issues. Remember, the progressive mantra is “the issue is never the issue.”  In short, that means you don’t try to solve problems or issues, you simply use every issue to instead attack the opposition. Changing sides on issues or lying about what you said previously about the issue doesn’t matter and happens often.

In Part 1 of this blog I scored Obama on redistribution of wealth and weakening America on a worldwide scale. Read that blog here.

All socialist ideologies require the move of the means of production from the private sector to governmental control. Beginning with Obamacare and moving to micro-managing regulations on manufacturing, coal mining, nuclear power, oil exploration and drilling, and energy use, the president has made an auspicious start but he still has a long way to go. His grade here for advancing progressive programs only rates a “C” minus.

To create a one-party political system run by a progressive elite, Obama needs to destroy the Republican Party and absorb the legislative power of Congress into the executive branch by using executive orders and department regulations. He has made the executive branch more powerful than the office he was elected to fill, but the stubborn resistance from the tea parties and other conservatives has slowed the process and the progressives will probably (hopefully) lose control of the Senate in November 2014. The president gets only another “C” minus here.

To prepare the way to move America into the control of an international organization, he needs to withdraw from foreign bases and weaken the U.S. military forces, which are still the best in the world. The president has announced his intent to cut the manpower of the Armed Forces to pre-WWII levels. The Defense Department, under timid civilian and military leadership, has rolled over and begun implementing manpower cutbacks by informing several hundred captains and majors they will no longer be needed. I’m sure notices to sergeants and others will follow. Majors, captains, and sergeants are the backbone of any military organization. It will take 15 years or more to replace the expertise being wasted. As long as the Pentagon is so gutless, Obama will succeed in diminishing both manpower and weaponry. He gets a “B” plus here.

Unless conservatives, independents, and moderate Democrats wake up, President Obama will eventually get higher grades as a progressive than he ever got during his academic training.

Do you like and understand what you’re reading? Share it with your friends and leave me comments here or on Amazon. I read them! You can also visit my Facebook page or follow me on Twitter. This content and more is available in my latest book, “INSIGHTS: Transforming America.” 

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by | September 1, 2014 · 7:30 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 147

A MAGIC TELEPROMPTER

Our president talks the talk better than any modern-age politician. But that is it. Walk the walk never follows.

He seems to believe words do not need to be followed up by actions. By some magic, the teleprompter follows up with more words that are delivered passionately with a choir of adoring acolytes standing behind him taking in every word. These people also believe President Obama’s words are complete in themselves. No action is required. Putin, the Ayatollahs, Syrian President Asad, ISIS, China, Iraqi Prime Ministers, all will fall in line once the King has spoken.

Maybe it worked that way a long time ago in make-believe land, but not in this cruel, hard, beautiful world we live in. It is incredible a two-term president who has a Harvard law degree can stand on his podium with a straight face and watch the words flow off the teleprompter believing he has handled whatever the crisis was. Does he believe he has a magic teleprompter that  converts words into actions?

When questioned about where is the presidential action, his puppets speak with one voice, with great patience, and in a condescending manner refer the rude questioner back to what the president said. It is wonderful to watch the expression on the questioner’s face — “Did I hear what I thought I heard?” — and so on until the next magical speech like the one he gave recently to the American Legion. Here, he promised a number of executive orders to improve the life of veterans needing assistance. There is nothing wrong with the executive orders, except, if he can do that with his pen why wait until now. Didn’t he know the Veterans Administration was in deep trouble over the deceitful ways it covered up its failure to help veterans? Don’t worry, the teleprompter will reach out and fix all wrongs. The imperial president has spoken.

The magical teleprompter won’t be able to fix the real problem of the president’s deliberate down-sizing of the Armed Forces. The teleprompter can’t do away with battalions of terrorists, or an increasingly aggressive China, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, or Putin’s plan to re-constitute the Soviet Empire. At times it seems Putin also has a magic teleprompter. Probably built one with the information Snowden stole from NSA.

How can a sane person stand in front of a audience of veterans and cast out promises of a better life for warriors when he is firing them and sending them back to an economy that has no jobs for them when the world grows more dangerous by the day? The teleprompter, in its best voice, implied American soldiers were responsible for the world troubles we are facing today because of their long occupation of other countries. Maybe he never heard of America’s role in two world wars or the Marshall Plan to give the European economy a new start. A world without America would be very different and not for the better. Does leaving some U.S. force level in Iraq look like a bad option now?

President Obama is stuck with his teleprompter in a pro-Muslim, anti-American mindset where the only solution is to destroy American military and economic power so wealth can be shared with the third world nations we have prevented from equal development and prosperity. All words, but very dangerous words because his inaction and failure to maintain a strong military force level equipped with advanced weapons will lead to the destruction of this great Republic.  The only applause will be from radical Islamists.

Written by the author of “Insights: Transforming America — Is This What We Fought For?” available now as an ebook, in paperback or hardcover on Amazon.com or BN.com. Follow the author on Twitter @factsfictions80. If you think this message is important, please share it.

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by | August 29, 2014 · 7:30 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 145

RESIST OR RESIGN OR BOTH?

The president, as commander-in-chief, directs the activities of the Defense Department. The secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs advise the president and send him recommendations. We all know that. Civilian rule over the military is a long-established and necessary doctrine. But what happens when the commander-in-chief is not capable of developing defense policy and providing the leadership to implement the policy? Are the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs still required to follow presidential guidance? The answer is a clear yes. We have a thing called the ballot box that settles who is our commander-in-chief.

President Barack Obama announces former Senator Chuck Hagel, second from left, as his nominee for Secretary of Defense. Photo by Matt Compton, from whitehouse.gov.

President Barack Obama announces former Senator Chuck Hagel, second from left, as his nominee for Secretary of Defense. Photo by Matt Compton, from whitehouse.gov.

But that doesn’t mean that General Dempsey and the secretary of defense are powerless to resist dangerous policies or can’t argue forcefully against presidential (commander-in-chief) orders. We have a president who, to my memory, has not been right in a single foreign or military issue. His decisions always put his politics and image ahead of what professionals think/know is best for the nation. Just review the mess in Libya with Gaddafi’s regime looking better every day since he was ousted and central control over Libya vanished, ending up with Benghazi and weapons flowing to radical Islamic groups though out the Middle East and Africa. The president’s inability to see the world as it is has led to a dangerous situation in the Ukraine as Putin takes advantage of the absence of American power and resolve. The famous disappearing redline in Syria, the failure to aid moderate Islamic forces to overthrow Asad, the vacillation over the reformation of the Iraqi government, the plans to drastically reduce the armed forces, the constantly televised presidential statements telling our enemies what we will not do and when we are leaving the theater are some critical examples. It is too late for the moderate secular Muslims have now been killed or absorbed into ISIS.

Dempsey and Hagel have had ample opportunity to judge the effectiveness and wisdom of their commander-in-chief. Some of their statements indicate they disagree with President Obama. Even if their refreshingly strong recent statements are walked back within a day or so, it might be a start. They are required to follow President Obama’s lead by our founding documents but they also took an oath to defend America and its people. If they cannot convince the president to change or modify his orders, both need to resign and take their case to Congress and the public. They have a duty to do so. But maybe they think they are indispensable or that by remaining in office they are preventing a bad situation from getting worse. Or do they just want to keep their prestigious positions and titles? I hope both of these men who have honorably served their country will choose the right path.

At the very least they need to stop the disintegration of the Armed Forces back to pre-World War II levels and to invest in developing new weapons to ensure America’s ability to defend itself and its allies. Congress will cooperate, they know peace comes through strength. War thrives on weakness. Every historian, except those with a progressive political agenda, will agree.

Written by the author of “Insights: Transforming America — Is This What We Fought For?” available now as an ebook, in paperback or hardcover on Amazon.com or BN.com. Follow the author on Twitter @factsfictions80. If you think this message is important, please share it.

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by | August 7, 2014 · 7:35 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 137

FREEDOM OF CHOICE

The real result of all far-left ideologies, be they communism, socialism, or Obama’s progressivism, is their impact on the choices left to other groups, organizations, and individuals. Far-left ideologies all have the goal of establishing a one-party system of government to manage the affairs of business, education, health, industry, justice, the military, and individuals. The progressive government is controlled by a small group of the progressive elite. The driving force is that the elite progressives “know what is better for everyone.” They are not evil. They just believe that the only way to establish their version of heaven on earth is to take control of all aspects of society. This is where they get their willingness to constantly use any means to accomplish the end: “a much better and fairer life for all.”

The very essence of progressivism is to control choice because they believe it is chaos when people are free to chose 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.

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 can result in anything but chaos. Instead, a small group of progressives can make better economic decisions that will produce a vastly more efficient economy and much fairer distribution of wealth.

The promise of freedom is the existence of choices. Without individual choices there is no freedom. Those of us who have lived seven or eight decades have seen, sometimes up close and personal,  societies where the basic choices Americans exercise every day were unheard of or only imagined. The Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, China, Cuba, Vietnam, and some South American nations have tried various far-left ideologies. In every one of them personal or individual choices vanished.

The last remaining choice is to fight the system. Not many take that choice. All isms can be measured by the choices made by an elite and those made by the people.  North Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh, probably the best political organizer of the 20th century, had 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.

All of the socialist, communist, or progressive one party elites are more or less the same. The more mature the system becomes the more extensive its choice making. Let’s look at a few of those. Take education. The elites decide what schools and courses will be available, who will be selected to go to what school, and what each will study. The same elites will decide what doctor, what hospital, what treatment is authorized, where people can live, what size of apartment, what will be grown on the farms, what industries will be allowed, and what each will produce in both quality and quantity. Some even decide how many children a couple can have. Internal travel and trips to other countries is strictly controlled.

When you lose your individual freedom, you lose the right to make most of life’s choices. The elites will look after you. When you think about something conceptual like freedom, think instead about the right of making choices being taken from you and your family. Don’t be taken in by the words. They don’t mean anything. Remember, “if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.” Without choice all hopes are narrowed.

Don’t be uniformed. READ “INSIGHTS : Transforming America — Is This What We Fought For?”  Now in paperback for $9.95 and kindle free at Amazon. Help spread the message.

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by | August 5, 2014 · 7:34 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 136

IMMIGRATION ISSUE

The president is not concentrating on fixing the border. He is focused on the border/immigration issue.

Obama doesn’t care one bit about the plight of the people on either side of the border. But the issue is wonderful. He is using it to further marginalize the Republican Party: “They don’t care about Hispanics, not even the the little helpless children.” To find a parallel exploitation of children, you have to go back to the time of the Crusades when children were rounded up and led on a disastrous journey to the Holy Land. I’m not sure anyone knows or understands the political reasons for the journey of children to Palestine, but you can be sure there were benefits to some organization and that the issue was twisted and lived longer than the children.

Back to our southern border. Does anyone doubt that the president would close the border if it was in the interest of progressives? But he knows that

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alankraft.me

closing the border would close the issue and that is not an option. The immigration issue is too important to the progressive mission of destroying their conservative opposition to have it fixed. The solution is not hard and there are enough bi-partisan supporters to pass a decent and effective immigration bill. All conservatives and many non-progressive liberals agree closing the border is a critical part of any solution. There are a few conservative hold outs, but America is not going to deport millions of people living here now. Stop the flow across the border, issue temporary work permits when it is in our interest, and enforce the law that future immigrants wait their turn for legal entry. Anyone crossing after a fixed date is immediately deported. Anyone staying here beyond the limits of their work permit or visa gets deported.

That doesn’t sound hard and it isn’t until you realize that President Obama will continue to cause chaos in the border region to detract attention from his other problems. The potential gains of causing border chaos to his progressive agenda are huge.

  • (1) Convince Hispanic voters the Progressive, formerly Democratic Party,  is their best bet;
  • (2) Increase the number of Hispanic voters;
  • (3) make the unemployment problem worse so people will accept his socialistic solutions; and
  • (4) weaken the power of traditional influence in American so his phone and pen can finish with the transforming of America.

Only then will he focus on closing the borders, this time to keep people in his “paradise” of socialism.

Still have doubts? Read my book “INSIGHTS: Transforming of America — Is This What We Fought For?” which is free on Kindle for a limited time.

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