Tag Archives: president reagan

by | September 9, 2014 · 7:30 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 149

 THE GOP NEEDS TRANSFORMING

Is America in trouble? I think so.

How did it happen?

GOPWell, you cannot blame President Obama for everything that’s happened under his watch. The Republican Party insider group is also guilty. The House of Representatives has the total Constitutional power to appropriate money. Everything the progressives have done with Obama’s leadership had to be funded. The government runs on money, our money. The House is supposed to be the place funding requests begin.

Where has it been? Republicans did not provide a single vote to the passing of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Yet they funded every bit of its implementation. Obamacare couldn’t have survived just on the funds that were appropriated when it was passed. The government had to pay for all the overruns, including the rollout. Instead of providing good stewardship of our money, the Republican leadership whined and complained about President Obama’s executive orders and the greatly increased scope and power of the HHS, EPA, IRS, DOJ, and Labor Department but was afraid to use its appropriation to bring  Obama’s transforming of America to a near stop.

When they did try to bring Obama’s spending under control by refusing to raise the debt limit unless the president delayed a part of the ACA, the president refused to sign the appropriations legislation with the Republican amendment to raise the debt ceiling.  He then began shutting down the parts of the government that would dramatically affect citizens, parts that could have been easily funded. Congress offered to help with authorization by allowing the president to shift funds to where they were needed. He refused and cleverly and successfully passed the blame onto the Republicans for shutting down the government. Not only did the American people accept the blatant blame shift, so did the Republican leadership. Now the speaker of the House and the Senate minority leader are afraid to use their Constitutional powers to defund certain parts of federal spending. With an opposition as timid and as inept as the current Republican leadership, we cannot look to them to act as a check on the growth of the federal government and spending.

The Republican Party leadership in and out of government is afraid to rock the boat. None of them would have signed the Declaration of Independence.  (That is my yardstick for judging the courage of politicians.) In my state of South Carolina, several politicians and Republican leaders would have signed. Among them are Representative Joe Wilson, Senator DeMint, now the President of the Heritage Foundation, Governor Nikki Haley, Senator Tim Scott, and Representative Trey Gowdy. It is this kind of courage that is needed.

President Reagan believed that “Government isn’t the answer. Government is the problem.” Of all the threats we face today, big government is the biggest threat to our freedom and economic growth. The Republican insider group just doesn’t believe this. While the size of government has grown spectacularly under President Obama, conservatives must remember that the eight years of President Bush saw large increases in the size and scope of government.  Term limits would fix a lot of problems with the Congress.

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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Filed under Barry Kelly, centralization, Conservative views, Intelligence & Politics, Obama, Obamacare, political solutions, Presidential Debate

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by | 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.

InsightsThink 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.

 

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by | October 4, 2012 · 2:38 pm

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS #22

SURPRISED?

Unless you have been hardwired to TV channels like MSNBC, you should not be surprised by President Obama’s poor performance last night. He now has a record to defend. No more soaring rhetoric, promising hope and change. Hope is a wonderful state of being. We all love it. So, no wonder a majority bought into the hope and change thing in 2008.  It helped that his opposition failed to inspire even the Republican base and ran an inept campaign. Who wouldn’t be wishing Obama’s rhetoric would be matched with equally inspiring deeds? Could a people often accused of racism possibly vote for a black man? Even those of us who worried about his lack of experience and his history of associations wished him well. We were proud of our nation for electing a black man.

The years past and the deeds did not match the words. Unemployment remained, maybe even got worse. The deficit  got much worse. The plans for recovery never came.  The man who promised to bring us together proved, in deed and word, instead  to practice divide and conquer. His foreign policy speeches, especially abroad, sound more like pleas to forgive our past mistakes and please like us. We will change under my leadership. Allies and foes alike where confused. The worst thing a President can do as Commander-in-Chief is to create uncertainty in US policy. President Carter, who demonstrated  the same lack of leadership and resolve, failed to act in Iran after the fall of the Shah, and led the Soviets to believe he wouldn’t take action if they filled a centuries long goal by invading Afghanistan on their first step to a warm water port. President Carter wanted the American people to put aside their pride and innovative spirit and put on his doom and gloom hair shirt. Our President must have studied Carterism  at Columbia or Harvard. President Reagan corrected the damage his predecessor  caused in our foreign policy, in the economy, the morale of the people and the readiness of our armed forces. Another four years of Carter who have left irreparable damage.  See a similar danger here?

What does President Obama bring to the table? Given a teleprompter and a prepared speech he will deliver a magnificent  piece of oratory. A performance that few in our history could match. But what else? He may project likeability but he is not. He is quick to anger. Carries grudges even those of his family. His treatment of the Supreme Court Judges in one of his State of  The Union speeches was unprecedented. Remember his treatment of Representative Ryan. Not the work of a kind or gentle man. He cannot think on his feet. You have seen how he does without the prepared speech on a teleprompter. He is very thin skinned and cannot take criticism. He would prefer to do nothing if he can’t have his way. He does not even meet with his
Cabinet, Jobs Council, or Democratic leaders and certainly not Republican leaders. If he ever reaches across the aisle, the opposition better duck.
On top of all that, he doesn’t like hard work. His preparation for the debate shows that. I believe he is causing David Axelrod, the brains behind Obama, and a man who can think on this feet, to lose his hair. His ward is neither bright nor willing to work hard. Just examine his schedule. Almost never working in the White House. Unlike his mentors Presidents Carter and Clinton who both worked hard at the job.

I can’t stand to close this piece without debunking President Obama’s bragging rights. I know something about preparing operations for Presidential approval. I did that for President Reagan for the last two years of his administration.  Take drones. They were developed and flying operations long before Obama’s tenure. All he did was approve the increase in their use. I agree with their use for it saves lives of our men and women in uniform. The only hard part for the President to decide is what is the political and foreign affairs fallout. The same is true of the Usama bin Laden affair. There is political risk in both approving or disapproving the staff recommendation to go. If it fails, ala Carter’s attempt to rescue hostages in Teheran, there will be negative fallout from the opposition. If the staff recommendation to go is disapproved there will be, sometime later, attacks from the opposition. Being President is a very hard role to fill. Sitting around the Situation Room with anxious looks for photo ops is not necessary. The credit goes solely to those who execute and face the real risks. Nor is leaking classified intelligence successes necessary to campaigning for re-election. Last night you saw the real President Obama who is not used to people talking back. Most supreme leaders and emperors are like that. Last night was no surprise.
http://www.factsandfictions.com                               The author of the Jack Brandon thriller series.

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by | September 28, 2012 · 2:06 pm

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 21

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

MY PERSONAL VIEW OF PRESIDENT REAGAN

In December of 1986, Frank Carlucci pulled me aside in the coffee hour following a worship service and told me President Reagan had asked him to be his National Security Adviser. He was putting together an entirely new Security Council Staff and wanted me to do all the intelligence, covert action, counter terrorism and counter narcotics staff work on his staff. I greatly admired Frank Carlucci and would have followed him anywhere. I reported for duty just after the first of the year. What follows is my personal view of President Reagan whom I would soon meet for the first time.

My motivation for writing this after decades of silence is the similarity between where President Carter and President Obama have led this nation. Neither one of them could ever have led us out of where we were then and now. But I have nothing but praise for President Reagan. I have several unflattering comments I could make about people in his Cabinet but silence is the better choice. I will say that Cabinet government cannot work without a strong, committed presidential staff. In my time, that was the National Security Council Staff. Cabinet members are soon captured by the organization they lead and soon are presenting the organizational viewpoint rather than that of the president. Please don’t believe I was an important person in the White House or that I was close to the president. In this case, admiration flowed one way. I was in his presence several times in the Situation Room and the Oval Office, but less so in the latter. My role was to provide the staff preparation for National Security Council meetings that fell within my area of responsibility. Okay, enough of the establishing of credentials.

In my first meeting with President Reagan in the Oval Office, he immediately made me feel at home and that he wanted to hear what I had to say. After his opening humorous story or joke, he said, “Frank, unless you tell me what is happening, I have no way of finding out.” He wanted us to know we could say what we thought without holding back. Bad news as well as good news is all relevant to the president. He was always gracious and sincerely interested in the well-being of his staff. I never saw him treat anyone with anger or sarcasm. He was extremely loyal to Cabinet members and Pentagon officials even when they deserved being sent to the wood shed. Keeping government organizations on the course the president wants, not what they want, is more than a full-time job.

Foreign officials couldn’t understand that the Reagan Revolution was first and foremost for Americans. His vision of the ‘Shining City on a Hill’ was not for nice-sounding rhetoric read from a teleprompter. It was call to all of us to throw off the cloak of doom and gloom and to remember our heritage, remembering also that government growth diminishes individual freedom. This is the president who destroyed Communism, rebuilt our military power, restored faith in capitalism and the free market, spoke truthfully, practiced transparency, and was respected by both parties. The most powerful man in the world never thought of himself in those terms. He understood those of us from blue collar backgrounds. The last quote I remember from him was, “Barry, I want Americans to be able to walk down any street in the world and be safe.” He cared about all of us. I’m glad he is not here to see Americans slaughtered in Libya while Carter, sorry, I mean Obama, dithers.

http://www.factsandfictions.com            The author of the Jack Brandon Thriller Series.

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Aside

INSIGHTS FROM EIGHT DECADES #5

January is here and a new election experience faces all of us. What can we expect? All writers have biases. Mine is I used to be a Democrat and am now a Republican. The change is partly to age and changing values. The dramatically increasing influence of the Progressive Wing of the Democratic party also is a big factor in my bias. National Security issues are very important to me, having spent nearly all my working life playing a role in the Cold War. Two years as a Special Assistant to President Reagan made me more than a Reagan Democrat. So enough about my bias. First what can Republicans hope for: The Party will nominate the candidate that seems to be the most electable. Nothing is more important than the limiting of the incumbent to one term. Fiscal responsibility, a serious effort to decrease the national debt, a strong military, a smaller Federal Government that promotes an environment that stimulates growth and increases jobs, a simpler and fairer tax code, welfare and medical assistance delegated to the states,a President who respects the Constitutional bounds on his/her power, and a foreign policy that supports our friends and allies while earning respect for American power around the world. Those  broad hopes seem to be appropriate to both parties and I think they are, but the rhetoric of the White House is beating a different drum.

The democratic drum of the Democratic Party leaders calls for a different kind of nation than I grew up in and served. I’m pretty good at understanding drum beats but I maybe a little off base here. For I hear a call to class warfare through the glorification of the middle class and the evil of the one percent. I also hear a cry for the systematic distribution of wealth in a quest for equality. The desire to increase the number of people on some sort of Federal assistance is prevalent. The shrinking of the military, both personnel and weapons budget, is a clear part of the message. The desire to protect citizens from all sorts of threats from our capitalist free market society is clear in past and pending regulations. Strongest of all is the belief that only government can solve today’s problems. What I distill from the total call of  the drum is we must move to a European Socialist economy dependent on Keynesian monetary principles. Sorry, no thanks.

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by | January 13, 2012 · 11:06 pm