Tag Archives: Progressives

by Barry Kelly | February 17, 2014 · 1:13 pm

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 99

SEIZING DEFEAT

With the way things are going now, can the Republican Party call upon their leadership and snatch defeat from the “jaws of victory?” You bet! Let’s see, what issues do they have to use against the Progressives?

Well, there is Ben Ghazi. Turning down requests for help, failing to equipped the Consulate with neither required staff nor equipment, failing to provide backup and/or rescue, making no effort to relieve the Americans struggling to defend themselves against impossible odds, and then lying for months about what happened. Oh yeah, the Administration did move decisively to arrest and imprison some poor daft film maker. In most election years, that would provide all that is needed for the party out of power to win both Houses. In some eras, Ben Ghazi would be enough to bring impeachment charges.

But the Republicans and Libertarians have more. What about the purity of the IRS? Did they not act as a partisan support force for the Progressives by sidelining dozens of opposition groups applying legally for tax-exempt status? IRS officials admitted as much. One ranking official even took the Fifth, refusing to answer questions from a Congressional committee. The IRS might have swung the election to the Obama team, but no one can provide proof of that. And now our president tells us there is not a smidgen of evidence that the IRS acted illegally. And with the FBI and the Justice Department failing to conduct a thorough and aggressive investigation, we will not see any evidence of wrongdoing. This is serious stuff. When whole agencies of the civil service fail to follow or support the law, what is our recourse? With Harry Reid controlling the Senate there is no recourse. Winning the Senate in 2014 is more crucial that most Americans think.

Like the pitchman in a carnival or in a TV commercial, “Wait there is more.” There have been dozens of occasions where the President has made law by Executive fiat or decided which part of the law the Executive would enforce. That is a clear no, no. The Executive is sworn to uphold the law, not make law when it is politically convenient. What did President Nixon do to face impending impeachment charges? Something like an amateurish break in of a Democratic Party office in the Watergate Hotel. Illegal, yes. Impeachment justified, yes. Great national damage done to the nation? Probably not. No one died. Entire Agencies of the civil service weren’t corrupted.

Then there is the best or worst of all, Obamacare and his famous lie to the people. Which wasn’t a mistake: He knew at the time he wasn’t being true to his office responsibilities. But when the end of transforming America justifies the dishonest means used to push the Affordable Care Act through the Senate by one vote, you lie.

Facing an opponent party with all that baggage should mean the House remains Republican and the Democrats/Progressives lose the Senate. But the leadership of the Republican Party has neither the courage nor the smarts to best the Progressives. Most of them don’t even understand what they are facing. The Republicans are playing the game by traditional rules with a willingness to compromise. Extending the debt limit against the wishes of the conservatives in the House of Representatives is an example of playing nice according to rules only your side is following. Going along to get along is a losing strategy. With the Progressive,s the “issue is never the issue.” Give your money and support to the politicians who share your values. If you do, America can avoid a coup by a thousand breaches of the Constitution.

By the author of the Jack Brandon novels, a former adviser to President Reagan.

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Tagged as Ben Ghazi, Progressives, Republican Party, the Senate

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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Filed under Barry Kelly, class warfare, Conservative views, Eight Decades of Insights, global warming, Intelligence & Politics, Obama, Politics, Progressives

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

by Barry Kelly | January 27, 2014 · 7:30 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 95

OBAMA’S MAGIC SHOW

The skill every magician must have is the ability to misdirect the attention of their audience. Good magicians are experts at re-direction to distract the most attentive audience. President Obama is a master of misdirection. The people, including congressional leaders and political talking heads, view Obama’s actions through a lens that does not apply to the present administration. This old lens evaluated political accomplishments, focused on national problems and the issues that define each problem.

For example, the problem of unemployment. Unemployment is not a new problem. We and the rest of the economically developed world have had more than a hundred years of grappling with unemployment and its associated issues. Financial, banking, and taxation issues often lead the way. Other issues are associated with foreign trade and education, especially the training of the work force, and the size and scope of the federal government. The size of the federal bureaucracy and its relationship of the states in our federal system is another relevant issue.

Both parties understand many of these issues need to be worked. The President doesn’t agree. He, like every disciple of Saul Alinsky, follows the mantra, “the issue is never the issue.” The issue is what is to be manipulated and used to destroy the opposition, not solve problems. In this case the opposition is the Republican Party. It must be destroyed or rendered ineffective before Obama’s transformation of America into a socialist nation can be completed.

Let’s look at a few of the Progressives’ misdirection actions.

Unemployment and under-employment: Most all economists and, for that matter, most Americans, know the economy is not good. Everyone knows people who cannot get a job, or are working several jobs. Young people graduating from colleges and universities cannot get jobs commensurate with their training. The facts are that a smaller percentage of Americans are in the work force than at any other time in the last several decades.

Obama’s Misdirection Magic message: Millions of jobs have been created by the Obama Administration. Unemployment is going down. The economy is on the way to recovery. Our policies are working.

The reality: Yes, millions of jobs have been created in the last five years but not nearly enough to keep pace with population growth. The unemployment rate has gone down only because millions of Americans have given up and have dropped out of the work force. If you have given up trying to find a job, you are not counted as being unemployed. The massive infusions of Federal Reserve funds (now tapering off from 86 billion a month to 75 billion per month) have fueled growth in the stock market and widened the gap between people who can afford to invest from those who can’t. But these historically unsound Keynesian monetary beliefs have not stimulated the economic growth that is necessary for everyone to benefit.

Obama Success: Result is that more people become dependent on the Government for living expenses and will vote to keep Progressives in power who will soon transformer our nation into a failing socialist economy.

The American health issue: There is and was broad interest in improving health care. Issues such as extension of health insurance to those who depend on charity or the emergency rooms of our hospitals, keeping your health care when moving from one job to another, the end to people losing their insurance due to “pre-existing conditions,” and several other areas. But most of us did not want to destroy the best medical care system in the world.

The Obama misdirection magic message: “If you like your health care, you can keep it. If you like your doctor you can keep your doctor. The Affordable Health Care Act will save money. Millions of people will be able to afford health care.”

The reality: The truth is you can’t keep the health care insurance you liked or your doctor and you will pay a significant increase in costs. Also more Americans will be without insurance coverage than before Obamacare started and you may not be able to go to the best health care centers like Mayo or the Cleveland Clinic.

Obama success: The capitalist system of private insurance companies will be destroyed. Millions of people will be without health insurance. The cost will be so high, the federal government will have to fund health care. The chaos could and probably will result in a single-payer system known as socialized medicine. Millions of people depending on the progressive or socialist government for health care will be captive to the progressive government. If Obama had told what he knew to be true about the Affordable Care Act, it is doubtful it would have passed by the one-vote victory. Obama won another election by misdirection and hiding information. This formula works for him.

President Obama’s magic show treatment of Benghazi, the IRS, NSA, spying on journalists, foreign policy, energy, tax policy, abuse of executive power, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria will be covered in the near future.

By the Author of the Jack Brandon novels. Please feel free to pass on all or parts of this blog.

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Tagged as affordable care act, employment, health care, misdirection, Obama, politics, Progressives

by Barry Kelly | November 4, 2013 · 3:51 pm

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS-85 THE ADVISOR

IS ANYONE OUT THERE?

Fighting loneliness in his subterranean office suite was the Advisor’s hardest problem. When he was approached a few years ago by the Keepers of the Book to become the next Advisor, he had had no idea how hard it would be to maintain perspective without face-to-face human contact. After his wife died, the Advisor had moved to an isolated cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains where he could write and think in peace and quiet. When the Keepers of the Book approached him, he had thought How hard could it be to go from my ridge-line cabin to an underground existence? Turns out it was very hard. He even looked forward to the twice a month delivery of food and supplies even though no conversation was permitted.

In reading of the Advisor Journals from long ago times, he could sense the isolation and loneliness that plagued his predecessors. He searched the journals for ways to cope but found none, only just to endure day by day. If only the President would allow him to get more involved it would help. Sometimes he thought, I may be the only person in America who enjoys talking to the man. He continued his musing.

Obviously, the President is tangled in the mess of the Affordable Care Act‘s rollout of its website. Another example of a hands-off management style. The President is a superb campaigner as long as the opposition cannot figure out what he wants. After five years, thousands of people have figured out Obamacare is primarily a giant step to a socialist government. Health care is not the prime issue. The real issue is capturing seven or eight percent of the nation’s economy. The cost doesn’t matter. Patient care doesn’t matter. Destroying the best medical system in the world doesn’t matter. The history of socialized medicine is ignored.

Every progressive/socialist is comfortable that the government knows better than the people what medical plan is good for them. The Progressives fervently believe that anyone who doesn’t like Obamacare is either a racist or a selfish-right-wing-tea drinking Republican. Why don’t they recognized health care can be fixed without destroying what works now? Tort reform, competition across state boundaries, concentrating on those who don’t have insurance coverage and want it would fix most of the health care system. Obamacare or any health care system cannot work without bi-partisan support and a full debate and discussion of each proposal.

If the people and states don’t fight it now, they will have little or no chance of fending off the imposition of a full socialist society. By the time the real Democrats wake up they will find their party gone. Big government bureaucrats will control all aspects of their lives. The people have to wake up and pay attention or the greatest democracy in the history of the world will be gone.

Overcome by his musing and in an effort to fight the quiet loneliness, the Advisor became to speak his thoughts out loud. “Elites don’t need to worry. They always get special treatment in totalitarian, socialist governments. After all, they make the rules and they know what the people need. Just ask any Russian senior citizen. All Progressive movements start with hope and change and end up with camps and no economic, religious , or political freedom. If you’re not in the elite Progressive hierarchy, prepare yourself for a quick slide to poverty and government medicine. Don’t worry, the issue won’t be you can’t keep your own doctor. The challenge will be you don’t have and can’t see any doctor when you want or need to. Fight now or pay later!” The Advisor hoped he was wrong, but was afraid he wasn’t, and there was no one to tell.

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

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS-83

DANGEROUS END GAME

The few people who think about the end game being pushed by the polite and articulate Progressives know these social experiments always end up in mass murders and political repression.

We aren’t that smart; we just believe reading history and accepting the facts associated with the Communist Revolution in Russia, Cuba, China, and North Korea is instructive. Lenin came to power with a slogan, “Land, Bread, Peace.” Who could argue with that? Lenin and Stalin didn’t mention the mass killing of class warfare or the repression of innovative thinking or the right of free speech. The goals were income distribution, equal opportunity, and the sacrifice of the individual for the improvement of the masses. The regulation of commerce, the state ownership of production, health, education, the end of a free press, the punishment of dissent, the abolishment of parliaments or legislatures, and independent courts were all necessary to bring about the establishment of the Progressives’ dream.

Don’t let the passion of the Progressives convince you to go along. Many of them really believe what they preach. It’s just that they have their own set of facts. Their blueprint for a Progressive society has never worked anywhere. Their track record is so bad when they called themselves socialists that a name change was necessary. Although they lurk in the left wing of the Democratic party, they are fervent Progressives. Some of them, like Hillary Clinton, have the courage to say they are Progressives. Their goal is the transformation of America. Heard that before? They will use any means to achieve a progressive/socialist society.

They will even make their wealthy backers richer in the process. Why would any president refuse to permit the building of a pipeline from Canada to U.S. refineries? Even the unions are in favor. The creation of jobs to put people to work should be a good thing. But no! Remember the Gulf oil spill and the speed with which the president banned all deep water drilling? The ruling forced the deep water drilling rigs to go elsewhere. Some went to Brazil. The Obama government was reported to have sent a billion dollars aid to Brazil to encourage Brazilian deep water drilling for oil. President Obama on a visit to Brazil said he wanted to be able to import oil from Brazil. It was also reported that a major backer of the Obama progressive agenda, Mr. George Soros, had a significant investment in Brazilian oil drilling.

Now the pipeline: do you think any major investor in deep water drilling for oil would welcome a pipeline bringing cheaper oil from Canada? Maybe that’s why the president and his former Secretary of State Clinton, both ardent followers of Saul Alinsky, came down, after some positive comments, against the pipeline.

For Progressives the issue is never the issue except when their big money is involved. Progressive tactics to seize power are ugly but not as ugly as their dream state. Just say no!

By the author of the Jack Brandon novels. The author has 27 years of government service, including two years serving P

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

resident Ronald Reagan in the 1980s as an advisor. Considering today’s volatile political situation, you are encouraged to share this on Facebook and to click the “like” button below. Comments and dialogue are welcome.