Reagan Campaign Ad in 1984 Made One Proud to Be An American

There have been better times in America.  And worse times, such as 1979 and 1980 under the sweater of Jimmy Earl Carter, Jr.

In 1980 I voted for Ronald Reagan for President, the first Republican to get my vote.  But I voted for him as a devoted Democrat, even one who had been active, from time to time, working for the Party, especially for its candidates who were my acquaintances. 

In 1984 I was a Republican voting for Ronald Reagan for President.  Yet to this day, no matter how eloquent President and candidate Reagan was in his humor and clever sayings and annecdotes of his tremendous sincere  love for his country, when I see him in film history  I see him as a dolt, so profound was the political propaganda of the day against him.

I had once worked a bit for Fritz Mondale when he was running for the U.S. Senate in the 1970s.  He was a good man then……a shrill and whining man in 1984……and a nasty  one in his campaign to regain the Senate seat in 2002. 

The same can be generally said of the Democratic Party nationally and state wide.

The best “Americana” ad ever, in my opinion, in my life time is the following 1984 ad for Reagan’s  re-election campaign.   As with Reagan, the ad made you proud of being an American.   Friend Mark Waldeland sent the video  to me and it struck a memory nerve.

Click on to see if you agree.

Dearborn Disgrace: Handing Out Christian Gospel of St. John Is Termed “Hatred of Muslims” says Mayor

Some weeks ago a handful of Christian evangelists were standing on public streets in Dearborn, Michigan, handing out booklets of the St. John’s Gospel to passersby.  One was on hand with a camera to take a video of trouble if it would occur. 

The public street was a few blocks away from a Dearborn-wide muslim celebration.

Within minutes several cars of city police showed up and confronted the Christians.   They were arrested for disturbing the peace.   The videos taken showed they had disturbed no body.

The folks at Powerline had provided the information for the above incident……and below is their followup, written by John Hinderaker:

“Now, via Andy McCarthy at The Corner, we learn that the evangelists have been acquitted of the criminal charges against them:

Much to the barely concealed chagrin of the Detroit Free Press, the Christian evangelists who were arrested for distributing St. John’s gospel on a public street outside an Arab festival in Dearborn, Michigan, a few months back have been found not guilty of breaching the peace. One of the four defendants was apparently found guilty of the less serious offense of failing to obey a police officer’s order.

The policeman’s order violated the First Amendment, so that conviction should be subject to reversal. It is good that a Michigan jury didn’t buy this plainly unconstitutional prosecution, but the story, taken as a whole, is sobering. These evangelists incurred expenses that must have been well into five figures, at a bare minimum, and on top of that had a legitimate fear of criminal conviction–all for engaging in activity that falls within the heart of the First Amendment’s protection. They were vilified, too; this is from the Detroit Free Press story that McCarthy refers to:

“It’s really about a hatred of Muslims,” [Dearborn Mayor Jack] O’Reilly said. “That is what the whole heart of this is. … Their idea is that there is no place for Muslims in America. They fail to understand the Constitution.”

That quote is so Orwellian as to leave one speechless. Passing out the Gospel of John reflects a “fail[ure] to understand the Constitution”? Does the Constitution ban Christianity? Some on the Left apparently think so.

The idea that a prosecution of this sort could take place in 21st-century America is an outrage, and the fact that it failed–this time–is small consolation.”

Comment:  Some in America don’t believe  propagandists of the Left have cozied up with muslim  antics  in America.    I strongly believe  they are wrong. 

The Left will marry any one or group if it is needed to advance Marxism or oppose “reactionaries”.   When Nikolai Lenin approved an ounce of private enterprise in the early years of the fledgling  Soviet Union Marxist dictatorship, he explained that  sometimes it is necessary to take one step back in order to take  two steps forward.  He needed money to purify the revolution.

Private ownership of anything was soon after abolished.  Anything is allowed in Marxism if needed for the cause of (forced) equality.   Obama seems to understand that quite clearly.

Bob Woodward: Obama As War Leader Conducting The War He Preferred

The following is an interview between President Obama and his leading Afghanistan war men written by Bob Woodward at the Washington Post:

“He was looking for choices that would limit U.S. involvement and provide a way out. His top three military advisers were unrelenting advocates for 40,000 more troops and an expanded mission that seemed to have no clear end. When his national security team gathered in the White House Situation Room on Veterans Day, Nov. 11, 2009, for its eighth strategy review session, the president erupted.

“So what’s my option? You have given me one option,” Obama said, directly challenging the military leadership at the table, including Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen and Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, then head of U.S. Central Command.

“We were going to meet here today to talk about three options,” Obama said sternly. “You agreed to go back and work those up.”

Mullen protested. “I think what we’ve tried to do here is present a range of options.”

Obama begged to differ. Two weren’t even close to feasible, they all had acknowledged; the other two were variations on the 40,000.

Silence descended on the room. Finally, Mullen said, “Well, yes, sir.”

Mullen later explained, “I didn’t see any other path.”

This stark divide between the nation’s civilian and military leaders dominated Obama’s Afghanistan strategy review, creating a rift that persists to this day. So profound was the level of distrust that Obama ended up designing his own strategy, a lawyerly compromise among the feuding factions. As the president neared his final decision on how many troops to send, he dictated an unusual six-page document that one aide called a “terms sheet,” as though the president were negotiating a business deal.

This inside story of Obama’s strategy review, and what it shows about his leadership style and decision-making, is based on meeting notes, classified memos and interviews with more than 100 national security officials. Those firsthand accounts reveal a new president confronting the realization that months of tough debate and hard work had not brought forth a clear solution that everyone could agree on. Even at the end of the process, the president’s team wrestled with the most basic questions about the war, then entering its ninth year: What is the mission? What are we trying to do? What will work?

At critical points in the review, the ghosts of Vietnam hovered. Some participants openly worried that they were on the verge of replaying that history, allowing the military to dictate the force levels. While Obama sought to build an exit plan into the strategy, the military leadership stuck to its open-ended proposal, which the Office of Management and Budget estimated would cost $889 billion over a decade. Obama brought the OMB memo to one meeting and said the expense was “not in the national interest.”

From the beginning of the review, it irked Obama that Petraeus, Mullen and Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, then the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, had been out campaigning for more troops on top of the 21,000 that Obama had approved shortly after taking office.

In September 2009, Petraeus called a Washington Post columnist to say that the war would be unsuccessful if the president held back on troops. Later that month, Mullen repeated much the same sentiment in Senate testimony, and in October, McChrystal asserted in a speech in London that a scaled-back effort against Afghan terrorists would not work.

Mullen’s Sept. 15 testimony had been reviewed and approved by Denis McDonough, then the head of strategic communications for the National Security Council. But it infuriated Obama’s inner circle at the White House, particularly Rahm Emanuel, his chief of staff and designated enforcer. What was the president’s principal military adviser doing, going public with his preemptive conclusion?

On the day of Mullen’s testimony, Emanuel and deputy national security adviser Thomas E. Donilon jumped on Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell outside the Situation Room, where the national security team had been meeting.

The president is being screwed by the senior uniformed military, they told Morrell. Filling his rant with expletives, Emanuel said, “Between the chairman [Mullen] and Petraeus, everyone’s come out and publicly endorsed the notion of more troops. The president hasn’t even had a chance!”

Mullen saw the heated powwow as he stepped out of the Situation Room. He was surprised they were giving him hell. The White House knew in advance what he was going to say. No specific troop number was in his testimony. He had been as amorphous as he could be.

Mullen let them seethe. “I just took it,” he said later.

The only distinctly new alternative offered to Obama came from outside the military hierarchy. Vice President Biden had long and loudly argued against the military’s 40,000-troop request. He worked with Gen. James E. Cartwright, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to develop a “hybrid option” – combining elements of other plans – that called for only 20,000 additional troops. It would have a more limited mission of hunting down the Taliban insurgents and training the Afghan police and army to take over.

When Mullen learned of the hybrid option, he didn’t want to take it to Obama. “We’re not providing that,” he told Cartwright, a Marine known around the White House as Obama’s favorite general.

Cartwright objected. “I’m just not in the business of withholding options,” he told Mullen. “I have an oath, and when asked for advice I’m going to provide it.”

When word of the hybrid option reached Obama, he instructed Gates and Mullen to present it. Mullen had other ideas. He used a classified war game exercise – code-named Poignant Vision and held at the Pentagon on Oct. 14, 2009 – to support his case against the option.

Believing the game was rigged, Army Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, Obama’s representative from the National Security Council, boycotted it. According to participants, Poignant Vision did not have the rigor of a traditional war game, in which two teams square off. This exercise was a four-hour seminar.

Mullen and Petraeus both attended, as did Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair, a retired admiral who had once headed the Pentagon’s war gaming agency. Blair had suggested the game, thinking it might help in assessing various troop levels.

As the exercise ended, Blair hinted at its limitations. “Well, this is a good warm-up,” he said. “When is the next game?”

Blair realized that Mullen and Petraeus had no intention of taking the issue further.

At the Nov. 11 meeting in which Obama expressed his frustration, Petraeus cited the war game as evidence that the hybrid option would not work.

It would alienate the Afghan people whom U.S. forces should be protecting, he said. “You start going out tromping around, disrupting the enemy, and you’re making a lot of enemies. . . . So what have you accomplished?”

Petraeus saw what Biden and Cartwright proposed as a repudiation of his protect-the-people counterinsurgency approach, the model he had designed and implemented in Iraq as commander of U.S.-led forces.

“This is not a stiletto, this is a chain saw,” Petraeus told Obama.

“So,” Obama asked, “20,000 is not really a viable option?”

Mullen, Petraeus, and McChrystal all said it would result in mission failure.

Okay,” Obama said, “if you tell me that we can’t do that, and you war-gamed it, I’ll accept that.”No one contradicted the claim. Cartwright and Blair weren’t at the Nov. 11 review session. Biden later told the president that the war game was “bull—-.”

Experienced Obama watchers could see from the back benches of the Situation Room that the president was becoming impatient. He waved a green-colored graph from the military labeled “Alternative Mission in Afghanistan” as if it were a piece of damning evidence in a courtroom.

The graph showed the projected deployments of 40,000 like a slow-rising mountain. The line peaked at about 108,000 troops in late 2010 and then gently slid back down to the then-current level of 68,000 in 2016.

“Six years out from now, we’re just back to where we are now?” said Obama in mild disgust. “I’m not going to sign on for that.”

Ben Rhodes, the president’s foreign policy speechwriter, passed a note to a National Security Council colleague: More troops in Afghanistan in 2016 than when he took office!

The timeline from deployment to drawdown was too long. “Actually,” Obama continued, “in 18 to 24 months, we need to think about how we can begin thinning out our presence and reducing our troops.”

He later told his staff, “I’m not going to leave this to my successor.” The military’s plan “compromises our ability to do anything else. We have things we want to do domestically. We have things we want to do internationally.”

Obama turned to Gates. “You have essentially given me one option,” he said.”It’s unacceptable.”

Gates replied, “Well, Mr. President, I think we owe you” another option.

Mullen and Lute, the National Security Council coordinator for Afghanistan and Pakistan, talked privately after the Nov. 11 meeting.

“Mr. Chairman, the president really wants another option,” Lute said. “You’re on the hook.”

Three days later, Mullen and the Joint Chiefs produced a new version of its “Alternative Mission in Afghanistan” graph. The revised chart showed a faster drawdown beginning in 2012, when Obama would be running for reelection. The then-current level of 68,000 would be reached by spring of 2013. Then the shift to an “advise/assist” mission would begin.

The new timetable relied on four “key assumptions,” none of which the strategy review had suggested was likely. The assumptions were that Taliban insurgents would be “degraded” enough to be “manageable” by the Afghans; that the Afghan national army and police would be able to secure the U.S. gains; that the Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan would be “eliminated or severely degraded”; and that the Afghan government led by Hamid Karzai could stabilize the country.

The chart projected about 30,000 U.S. troops remaining in Afghanistan through 2015.

Two weeks later, on the day before Thanksgiving, the president and Emanuel met in the Oval Office with Donilon and his boss, retired Gen. James L. Jones, the national security adviser. No Pentagon officials were there.

Obama said this had been his most difficult decision – and it seemed to show on his face.

“I’ve decided on 30,000,” he said.

Obama described how he wanted to explain his strategy to the American people in a speech scheduled for Dec. 1 at West Point.

“This needs to be a plan about how we’re going to hand it off and get out of Afghanistan,” he said. “Everything that we’re doing has to be focused on how we’re going to get to the point where we can reduce our footprint.”

He said he didn’t want to use the word “counterinsurgency.” The language he wanted was “target, train and transfer.”

The president then said, “I want everybody to sign on to this – McChrystal, Petraeus, Gates, Mullen, [U.S. Ambassador Karl W.] Eikenberry and [Secretary of State Hillary Rodham] Clinton. We should get this on paper and on the record.” With the president speaking as though there would be a signed contract, some had the mistaken impression that he wanted actual signatures.

Donilon pointed out that not everything was resolved with the military. The Pentagon had revived a pending request for 4,500 more “enablers” – logistics, communications and medical personnel.

“I’m done doing this!” Obama said, clearly annoyed.

The 30,000 was a “hard cap,” he said. “I don’t want enablers to be used as wiggle room. The easy thing for me to do – politically – would actually be to say no” to the 30,000.

The president gestured out the Oval Office windows, across the Potomac River, in the direction of the Pentagon. He said, “They think it’s the opposite. I’d be perfectly happy . . .” He stopped mid-sentence. “Nothing would make Rahm happier than if I said no to the 30,000.”

There was some subdued laughter.

The military did not understand, he said. “It’d be a lot easier for me to go out and give a speech saying, ‘You know what? The American people are sick of this war, and we’re going to put in 10,000 trainers because that’s how we’re going to get out of there.’ “

It was apparent that a part of Obama wanted to give precisely that speech. He seemed to be road-testing it.

Donilon said Gates might resign if the decision was 10,000 trainers, an option the military leaders had all rejected in the early stages of the review.

“That would be the difficult part,” Obama said, “because Bob Gates is . . .there’s no stronger member of my national security team.”

No one said anything more about that possibility.

“We’re not going to do this unless everybody literally signs on to it and looks me in the eye and tells me that they’re for it,” Obama said.

The president was as animated as most in the room had ever seen him. “I don’t want to have anybody going out the day after [the speech] and saying that they don’t agree with this.”

But even as he laid out how he planned to explain his choice to send 30,000 more troops, he added a caution. “There’s a chance the decision could change,” he said. “We may need another speech.”

Later that same day, Obama held his regular weekly meeting with Gates in the Oval Office. The room is so well lit, bright with no shadows, that it has a stark feeling. It is assuredly a setting for business.

Jones was also there; Mullen was traveling, so Cartwright attended in his place.

Under the redefined mission, Obama told Gates, the best I can do is 30,000. “This is what I’m willing to take on, politically,” the president said.

Gates had worked for seven other presidents. Each had his own decision-making style. They often floated assertions and conclusions, sometimes emphatically, sometimes tentatively. It wasn’t always evident what they meant.

“I’ve got a request for 4,500 enablers sitting on my desk,” Gates said. “And I’d like to have another 10 percent that I can send in, enablers or forces, if I need them.”

“Bob,” Obama said, “30,000 plus 4,500 plus 10 percent of 30,000 is” – he had already done the math – “37,500.” Sounding like an auctioneer, he added, “I’m at 30,000.”

Obama had never been quite so definitive or abrupt with Gates.

“I will give you some latitude within your 10 percentage points,” Obama said, but under exceptional circumstances only.

“Can you support this?” Obama asked Gates. “Because if the answer is no, I understand it and I’ll be happy to just authorize another 10,000 troops, and we can continue to go as we are and train the Afghan national force and just hope for the best.”

“Hope for the best.” The condescending words hung in the air.”

 

Philip K. Howard’s Manifesto to Clean Up The Mess In Washington

Philip K. Howard at the Daily Beast has offered the following 5 ways “to liberate America, streamline government, and revive our can-do spirit.  He titles it:   ”Manifesto for a New Politics”.

“Americans must come together and force a basic overhaul of America’s governing structures.

Five changes are essential to create a responsive government and to revive America’s can-do spirit:

1. Clean out the stables of government. Democracy is not supposed to be a one-way valve, always piling new law on top of old laws. In each area of government, appoint respected citizens and experts to make proposals to clean out unnecessary entitlements, mandates, and regulations. Going forward, laws and regulations should expire periodically under sunset laws. Government must make choices for the future, not stay mired in choices of the past.

2. Radically simplify law. Laws must be understandable to be effective. Write laws to set public goals and general principles. Leave implementation to designated officials, with clear lines of accountability. The Constitution is 16 pages long. No statute should be over 50 pages.

3. Push responsibility down to local organizations. Give back to Americans the freedom to make a difference—without unnecessary interference of centralized bureaucracy, especially in schools and other social services. Let public schools operate with the same freedoms as charter schools. Hold people accountable for results, not bureaucratic compliance.

4. Restore boundaries to lawsuits. Fear of lawsuits has poisoned human interaction in most areas of society, especially health care and schools. Law should set outer boundaries of required conduct, not interfere in everyday disagreements. This requires judges and legislatures to define reasonable social norms as a matter of law. Create special health courts to provide a foundation of reliability and trust, essential to making health care safe and affordable.

5. Revive accountability for public employees. Individual accountability is a critical component of a functioning democracy. Overhaul civil service and teacher tenure: Public servants should have more freedom to take responsibility, and they must be accountable for their choices. Make government transparent; sunlight is the best disinfectant.

There’s nothing wrong with America that can’t be fixed—if Americans are free to use their common sense. But the legal swamp of modern government won’t let us roll up our sleeves and make needed choices. That’s why Americans must come together and force a basic overhaul of America’s governing structures. Our freedom, and our children’s future, depend upon it.”

Philip K. Howard, a lawyer, is the author of Life Without Lawyers: Liberating Americans From Too Much Law, just released by W.W. Norton, and the bestselling The Death of Common Sense. He is chairman of Common Good and advises leaders of both parties on legal and regulatory reform.

Comment:  Any time a new  law is passed is the time police action is increased.  Police have the responsibility to enforce laws.

Democrats always in my lifetime have enjoyed passing laws.   For decades they have judged a worthy representative as one who passes as many laws as possible.   He is engaged in improving society by further controling what members in society think, do, and produce……or don’t produce.

Republicans, until this year, 2010, have generally been a  reactive force……reacting to the legal mess Democrats usually cause through legislation.  Sometimes years go by before people really discover how bad a law might be. 

This year Republicans,  whether they want to or not, have been squeezed into becoming active…..some are even awakening to the threats against our American democratic system by the Obama administration.   Others are merely interested in dodging the Tea Party bullets. 

Some newly electeds may do the people well by emulating Chris Christie, Governor of New Jersey.  He is doing what he was elected to do and that is TO GOVERN…..to serve the people, and in New Jersey, that means, most importantly, to carry the state out of bandruptcy.

Who is going to Govern after November, 2012, to carry America out of bankruptcy?

Obama Did Not Invent Marxism…..It Is Alive and Well in Our Home States

Steve Malanga writes about Big Government strangling our home states.   Nearly all Blue States are facing bankruptcy or serious financial shortfalls.  My Minnesota, which loves to spend taxpayers dollars for any and all social action fads of the day, fair and foul, is struggling despite  a balanced budget law.   Democrats will be attacking that law again….They can always count on some Ted Kennedy type judge to call the play for the Lefty home team.  The article is in today’s New York Post:

“The Tea Party movement may have arisen to protest rising deficits and increasing federal control of everything from health care to the auto industry — but the big-government coalition it’s fighting wasn’t born in Washington. The federal agenda that the movement is now battling to overturn originated in state capitals like Albany, Trenton and Sacramento.

This agenda has been promoted with growing success in the last 50 years by a self-interested coalition of public-sector unions and social-advocacy groups that benefit from bigger government, higher taxes and more public control of the economy.  Merely “taking back” Congress on election day won’t stop the relentless rise of this condition, which has at its disposal enormous resources.

President Obama is an expression of the big-government coalition, and his election to the White House was a signature event in its rise to power. He began his public life as a Chicago community activist heading a nonprofit funded heavily by government to organize neighborhood residents into a political force.

As a young college graduate immersed in the world of tax-bankrolled activism, Obama learned a lesson that many other activists also absorbed: To protect the funding that created and nourished their groups, community organizers like him had to head into politics.

An attractive candidate, Obama garnered the support of other activists in his Illinois campaigns, laying the groundwork for his presidential run. Members of ACORN, the controversial social-service group, were among his biggest supporters and worked hard to elect Obama to the US Senate, according to a 2003 article by a Chicago-area ACORN organizer.

In New York, government-funded activists long ago took the same road into politics as the young Obama. Organizers like Ramon Velez (who ran a vast, government-funded nonprofit network in The Bronx), Pedro Espada (who founded and ran Bronx health clinics) and Vito Lopez (who built a Queens social-service empire) all leapt from community activism into state and local politics.

By the early 1990s, in fact, a fifth of all New York City Council members and 15 percent of state legislators had come out of the social-service world. They could be counted on to advocate for higher taxes and more money for government services.

Over time, these activists partnered with another growing force in local government that shared their affinity for bigger government — public-sector unions. These groups became important players in city halls and state capitals starting in the late 1950s, when then-New York City Mayor Robert Wagner gave public employees the right to collectively bargain in order to win their support in his battles with the Tammany Hall political machine.

Quickly, other big-city mayors and governors also began granting employees the right to negotiate with government for wages and pay — ignoring the critics who pointed out that because government was a monopoly, public workers could hold cities and states hostage by going on strike.

The critics’ fears soon came to pass. In 1966 alone, teacher strikes shut down some three dozen urban school systems. When states began limiting public employees’ right to strike, unions quickly figured out a new strategy centered on becoming politically active in legislatures and city councils.

The evolution was quick. One example: In 1970s California, the most influential groups in state politics were the private-industry associations of the trial lawyers, insurance companies, doctors and hospitals. But by the mid-1980s, the biggest donors to political campaigns and spenders of lobbying dollars in Sacramento were public-sector unions for teachers, state employees, police, firefighters and prison guards.

The rise of these groups coincided with a growing public-sector ability to win big pay and benefit raises, including pension benefits. One startling result: Today, states and cities face an estimated $3 trillion in unfunded pension and retiree-health benefits for public employees — a burden that will squeeze budgets for decades.

The big-government coalition heavily supported candidate Obama for president, and he has rewarded them. The various stimulus packages of the last year and a half have included hundreds of billions of dollars to preserve state and local government jobs. Much of this aid came with huge strings attached: Local governments that took the money committed to not cutting their program spending or reducing their workforce.

But perhaps the biggest boost to this coalition has been ObamaCare. Public unions heavily lobbied for the plan, even though most of their members already have health coverage. Their leaders know it will be good for the unions’ “business”: As government has increased its involvement in health care through programs like Medicare and Medicaid, politicians have written rules and requirements for these programs that make union organizing easier. That’s one reason why health-care unionization rates remain above the average for the rest of the private economy.

This coalition’s power is unlikely to fade even if the Tea Party movement pushes Congress back toward the center. The real reform battles need to be fought in state capitals and city halls, where this big-government coalition remains powerful and where it gathers the resources that give it so much leverage in Washington. Will the Tea Party aim at this target after November?”

Comment:   To answer the question, I don’t think we have seen the last of the Tea Party.  Conservative talk, writing, teaching, and everything else connected to it has been suppressed during this post Viet Nam war era of New Left censorship called Political Correctness.

The Left Wing Big Government people have  never had such a strangle hold over American culture with the series of “revolutions” it has perpetrated since the late 1960s with university Marxist and other self interested leeches  sucking life’s juices out of the American body at large.

The corruption begins in the home states and primarily in the home state schools.  Our “teachers” know not the poisons they brew.