Tag Archives: socialism

by | July 28, 2014 · 8:20 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 133

VETS AND TRANSFORMING

There is something about duty and honor that all veterans understand. It starts with “who can I trust to have my back and who keeps their word?” Those who fail those two measurements don’t serve with duty and honor. They just do the time and collect the retirement pay.

veteransI have to be careful here, for it has been a long time since I saw a gun fired in anger and attitudes change. I can’t get inside the head of a young veteran who is  three or four decades younger than I am. But I can speculate on the issues they are facing. The big one concerns their ability to provide for themselves and their families. Thousands of well-trained, battle-savvy soldiers, sailors, Air Force personnel, and Marines will be summarily discharged by a commander-in-chief who dislikes and distrusts the American military. He has traveled the world apologizing for their actions over the last several decades.

The damage to the security of America caused by this unjustified downsizing is bad enough but the hardship this progressive ideology places on our best citizens, current and future, is a national tragedy. It is also dishonorable. The secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs should resign rather than preside over President Obama’s ideological motivation to make American more equal to the rest of the world. Active duty troops discharged against their wishes is despicable treatment for their service. Troops facing this surprise attack must resent the leaders who betrayed them.

Where will they find employment? Medical care for them and their dependents?  From a dysfunctional VA? This government-run service has been operating since the Civil War. It is an ironclad example that the no government can or should run a large medical system. Once Obamacare takes hold, we will ALL be in a VA-like system. At least we will be sharing that hardship with our veterans. The high odds of newly discharged veterans finding employment commensurate with their needs are not likely to improve under Obama’s anti-business administration. Training programs are of questionable use and unemployment compensation does end. Will our veterans discharged for a president’s ideological whim view their predicament as anything but the government’s breaking of a promise? I hope they will use their talents and skills to elect a government that will keep its promises.

The Republican Party needs to outline what it will do for these troops. The best plan would be to cancel Obama’s plans to severely cut military troop levels. Next in line would be to pass a G.I. education bill that will enable all who have kept their part of the bargain to get an education that will make them employable in the civilian economy. Unless the Senate and the White House are retaken by the Republican Party, I’m afraid we will find our young veterans turning to food stamps and other government subsidies. Having our veterans become dependent on the government is fine with the progressive ideology of the president and his closest advisers. Is it okay with you?

Read “INSIGHTS Transforming of America  Is this what we fought for?”

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by | July 23, 2014 · 7:35 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 132

YOUNG, HOPEFUL, AND WAITING

It’s been a long time since I was young, hopeful, and waiting for good things to come along. So please cut me some slack if and when I get too far off base. Republicans, Democrats, and whatever else weren’t even part of my fears, hopes, or wishes when I was young. By young, I mean those of you who are between 18 and 28. I doubt any of my blog readers are in that age group. I hope so, but doubt it. You don’t have the draft to simplify your life’s plans or those of the next six months. I think many of us used the draft and the armed forces as a place and time to grow up or, at least, wise up. We had no worries about getting a job right out of high school or college. Uncle Sam had plans for us and he paid for our time. Beyond that, for some of us he paid for our undergraduate education and in my case, a graduate degree as well. So people in their early- to mid-twenties graduated without debt and with several jobs to pick from. I don’t think anyone in my class of ’59 at PITT had less than four of five real employment interviews and two or three real jobs opportunities. No one had to go back home to live because they couldn’t find employment.

Contrast that with today’s young graduates five-plus years into the transforming of America. First the college seniors: you are probably deep in debt from getting a so-so education; few of you have employers coming on campus to beg you to consider working with them; you are not even sure where you will be living in the six months after graduation; most of the possible jobs are well below your hoped-for job level. The challenge of those jobs is to try and live on your salary. Getting married, raising a family, buying a new car, looking at real estate is part of a dream. It sure isn’t reality. Your medical insurance requires bigger monthly payments than the monthly mortgage payments your parents paid. Right after graduation some kind of transportation and auto insurance is as far as you can stretch. You don’t want to quit. That is no option for you. But the world is really unfair.

You just graduated from a place where most of your professors probably supported the progressive Obama administration. Is ‘progressive’ a bad word? It is the word a radical revolutionary, Saul Alinsky, adopted to replace the words “communism” and “socialism.” Those words just don’t sell well in America. Many of your professors were actively in favor of Obama’s plan of transforming America. They were in favor of hope and change. Great words but only if the hope becomes real and the change is acceptable. You see, the world has never been fair. Nobody owes you anything. Harsh, but true. The progressives want you to think the government is responsible for all your problems.

For those of you who could not afford or didn’t want to go to college, you have your own problems finding jobs that pay well. It is even harder. You’re expected to fill mostly service jobs. You know a college education is not for everyone. In America many people without degrees have created businesses, raised strong families, and held important management jobs in towns, cities, and states across America. The progressive ideology hurts you just as much as anyone. Nearly all the problems, both you and your college-educated peers face on a daily basis, are because of the policies of President Obama that do not provide an environment that encourages economic growth. President Obama’s economic recovery plan has not worked and will not work. In truth, the job market gets worse every year. Don’t believe the government’s employment figures. They are not real numbers. Just ask your friends who have been looking for good jobs and finding none. The affect of transforming America on you is that you do not now have a job commensurate with your education or current needs and probably won’t until the transforming process stops and the fixing process begins. Until then you are being made increasingly dependent on government support and that is the  intent of the progressives.

Like it or not.

Read “INSIGHTS Transforming America  Is this what we fought for?”  

By the author of the Brandon adventure/mystery novels.

 

 

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by | July 20, 2014 · 7:50 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 131

TRANSFORMATION AND SENIORS

Writers know they should write about what they know. In thinking how to write about the impact of President Obama’s transforming of America on senior citizens, I realized  this is right in my wheel-house because that includes me at age 83. So I started with my own reactions to transformation.

First of all, I must admit President Obama gave us full warning about his plans for change. I didn’t support him because of his lack of any kind of management or leadership experience and his very far left ideology. But I didn’t expect the media to be so incredibly locked in to his socialistic view of the world. Nor did I think the Republican leadership in Congress would be so timid.

After five-plus years of unconstitutional growth in the power of the executive branch at the expense of the legislative powers, the speaker brings a whining lawsuit against President Obama for taking his toys. Who does he think will enforce the courts ruling if he wins? Attorney General Eric Holder certainly won’t.  If  the speaker had any courage he would use his powers of the purse given to the House by the Constitution.

A few days ago I wrote about another disappointment. The civil service in many democracies is a check on an executive gone too far. I may have been too hard on the many loyal and capable civil servants but, as a senior citizen with years in the civil service, I am dismayed at the way the employees of the IRS, HSS, EPA, State, DHS, FBI, C!A, and the Joint Chiefs have fallen into lock step to support the president’s unlawful policies.  In a free society, government workers cannot enforce what they know is an unlawful course of action. I remember some trials after WWII in Nuremberg, Germany, that settled that issue.

Senior  citizens have seen how the massive printing of money (bonds) by the Federal Reserve called Qualitative Easing cheapens their dollars while their income has not kept up with real world inflation. Medicare will be destroyed by Obamacare, as will the best medical care in the world. Sure, far too many people had no insurance, but that could have been fixed without moving rapidly toward a single-payer system and socialized medicine. Social security, which most of us have grown to count on, is less sustainable now than it was five years ago. This program needs attention now.

The rule of law is all that stands between us and a chaotic system based on favoritism and punishment without due process. This administration, especially this attorney general, enforces the law selectively and only investigates when it is in the interests of his imperial president.  Many senior citizens have fought in wars, including the Cold War, and know the necessity of keeping a strong, well-equipped, and cared for military. We are nervous about the drastic reduction of our forces, the VA scandal, and the loss of respect for our views throughout the world. We have seen enemies who were impervious to diplomacy and endless talk with the threat of ineffective sanctions. We know America needs a leader whose word is respected throughout the world.

We are also concerned about the re-distribution of wealth, the growth of the government, the shift away from our close relationship with Israel, the so-called re-set with Russia, the debacle in Iraq, the rush to the good war in Afghanistan, the timid negotiations with Iran over the development of nuclear weapons, the anti U.S. development of domestic energy attitude, including the Keystone Pipeline.

Enough is enough.

Read my new book, “INSIGHTS – Transforming America. Is This What We Fought for?”

 

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EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 129

IS THE PRESIDENT INEPT?

President Obama, photo by the New York Daily News.

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.

InsightsI 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 | July 16, 2014 · 7:30 am
by | July 14, 2014 · 7:30 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 128

OBAMA AND THE MILITARY

Obama vs 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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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