Eugene Robinson and the Loony Left Ideas about Ronald Reagan

Eugene “Robinson of the Washington Post must have been smoking something to come up with the following claims in his article, “The GOP’s Selective Memory on Ronald Reagan,” at the Washington Post.

“The Republican Party tries to claim the Reagan mantle but has moved so far to the right that it now inhabits its own parallel universe. On the planet that today’s GOP leaders call home, Reagan would qualify as one of those big-government, tax-and-spend liberals who are trying so hard to destroy the American way of life.

Some Republicans, I suppose, might be so enraptured by the Reagan legend that they are unaware of his actual record. I hate to break it to Sarah Palin, but Reagan raised taxes. Often. Sometimes by a lot.

When he took office as governor of California in 1967, the state faced a huge budget deficit. Reagan promptly raised taxes by $1 billion – at a time when the entire state budget amounted to just $6 billion. It was then the biggest state tax increase in history. During Reagan’s eight years in Sacramento, the top state income tax rate increased from 7 percent to 11 percent. Business and sales taxes also soared.

When Reagan moved into the White House, he brought with him a theory that critics derided as “voodoo economics” – the idea that the way to balance the budget was to lower taxes, not raise them. Reagan quickly pushed through the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981, a tax cut of about $264 billion. Republicans seem to rank this event alongside Columbus’s discovery of the New World as one of the great milestones in human history.

What eludes the GOP’s selective memory is that Reagan subsequently raised taxes 11 times, beginning with the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982. All told, he took back roughly half of that hallowed 1981 tax cut. Why? Because he realized that the United States needed an effective federal government – and that to be effective, the government needed more money.

Republicans laud Reagan’s unshakable commitment to smaller government. Yet federal employment rolls grew under his watch; they shrank under Bill Clinton. Reagan had promised to eliminate the departments of Energy and Education, but he didn’t. Instead, he signed legislation that added to the Cabinet a new Department of Veterans Affairs.

On social issues, Reagan advocated a federal ban on abortions, the legalization of organized prayer in the schools and an end to court-ordered busing to achieve racial balance. He accomplished none of this. In his personal life, by all accounts, Reagan was a live-and-let-live kind of guy. He did, after all, spend much of his adult life as a denizen of – cover your ears, Republicans – evil Hollywood.

None of this is to suggest that the patron saint of modern American conservatism was some sort of flaming liberal, just that he was a pragmatist who respected objective reality. In a big state or a big country, big government was a given. When taxes needed to be raised, the thing to do was raise them.

Even though Reagan knew that ideology had its limits, I don’t doubt that he truly believed the ideology he espoused. His biggest impact on domestic politics was that the center of gravity shifted to the right – enough, in fact, that what once were extreme views have become orthodox.

Democrats sound and act almost like Reaganites. It was Clinton, remember, who balanced the budget and ended welfare “as we know it.” President Obama has pledged not to raise taxes on the middle class, and Democrats couldn’t even manage to reverse tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans that might have made even Reagan blush. Obama based his health-care package on Republican ideas – including the individual mandate, which had been proposed by conservative think tanks and implemented by Mitt Romney.

Meanwhile, the Republican Party has lost its mind. The GOP argues for deep across-the-board budget cuts of a kind that Reagan ultimately rejected. Party leaders denounce the belief that government can do any good for anybody as “socialism.”

Here’s a quote that might have come from a Democrat during last fall’s tax-cut debate: “We don’t seek to aid the rich, but those lower- and middle-income families who are most strapped by taxes and the recession.” In fact, Ronald Reagan said those words in 1983, when he was arguing for tuition tax credits. Remind me: Who are the Gipper’s true heirs?”

I don’t call Eugene Robinson loony.  He definitely belongs to the loony left.   His article above making a case that Ronald Reagan would find a home among 2011 Obama Democrats is proof Mr. Robinson can be very loony from time to time. 

He is a column writer.  Perhaps in this case he intentionally entered into looniness for a reason beyond my guess.  He did fail to inform his readers, however, that Ronald Reagan had to suffer a Democrat Party Congress.   He didn’t have much of a free hand to dictate his wishes as had Mr. Robinson’s man, Obama.

Mr. Reagan did leave the country in debt….so Mr. Robinson could recognize the Democrat in the 40th American president.   But Ronald Reagan deeply apologized for this rather serious condition.   But he did admit that he liked what he had accomplished during his eight years in office.   And so did….very, very much so.

Ronald Reagan was my kind of American.   He loved the country….contrary to our faux pas present president, Barack Hussein Obama, who never speaks sincerely about the country he leads and never tells fond stories about his life as an American.   He is cold and without core with the possible exception of his devotion to Marxist government.

Republicans today are live and let live kind of people, not Democrats except in the major most important moral and ethical matters of the day…..abortion, traditional family, instructing our children what it means to be an American….He believed in freedom of speech over Leftwing Democrat Party Rules of Political Correctness.  Mr. Reagan knew what being an American required……its three pillars for existence….a belief in God, Liberty, and E Pluribus Unum.

Robinson’s Democrat loonies preach antireligion, government invasion of personal liberties, and multiculturalism.

Every move made by the Democrat president and Congress has been to reduce citizen rights and freedoms by expanding government.   This is the process of the Obama Progressive, always progressing toward government dictatorship.  

Perhaps Eugene Robinson had never heard Ronald Reagan’s general explanation about government:

“Government isn’t the solution to our problems.   Government IS the problem.”

Ronald Reagan would have roundly applauded Dennis Prager’s adage:  The bigger the government; the smaller the people.”    Ronald Reagen revelled in the importance of the American citizen to be as free from government rule as possible.

Compare that, Mr. Robinson with your favorite Democrat, Barack Hussein Obama.

The following is a video which reviews a few of President Reagan’s special moments which was part of the Robinson display.  It is worth the few minutes of your time:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/video/2011/02/04/VI2011020404849.html?sid=ST2011020705382

Stratfor Report: “Egypt, Israel, and a Strategic Reconsideration”

By George Friedman

The events in Egypt have sent shock waves through Israel. The 1978 Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel have been the bedrock of Israeli national security. In three of the four wars Israel fought before the accords, a catastrophic outcome for Israel was conceivable. In 1948, 1967 and 1973, credible scenarios existed in which the Israelis were defeated and the state of Israel ceased to exist. In 1973, it appeared for several days that one of those scenarios was unfolding.

The survival of Israel was no longer at stake after 1978. In the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, the various Palestinian intifadas and the wars with Hezbollah in 2006 and Hamas in Gaza in 2008, Israeli interests were involved, but not survival. There is a huge difference between the two. Israel had achieved a geopolitical ideal after 1978 in which it had divided and effectively made peace with two of the four Arab states that bordered it, and neutralized one of those states. The treaty with Egypt removed the threat to the Negev and the southern coastal approaches to Tel Aviv.

The agreement with Jordan in 1994, which formalized a long-standing relationship, secured the longest and most vulnerable border along the Jordan River. The situation in Lebanon was such that whatever threat emerged from there was limited. Only Syria remained hostile but, by itself, it could not threaten Israel. Damascus was far more focused on Lebanon anyway. As for the Palestinians, they posed a problem for Israel, but without the foreign military forces along the frontiers, the Palestinians could trouble but not destroy Israel. Israel’s existence was not at stake, nor was it an issue for 33 years.

The Historic Egyptian Threat to Israel

The center of gravity of Israel’s strategic challenge was always Egypt. The largest Arab country, with about 80 million people, Egypt could field the most substantial army. More to the point, Egypt could absorb casualties at a far higher rate than Israel. The danger that the Egyptian army posed was that it could close with the Israelis and engage in extended, high-intensity combat that would break the back of Israel Defense Forces by imposing a rate of attrition that Israel could not sustain. If Israel were to be simultaneously engaged with Syria, dividing its forces and its logistical capabilities, it could run out of troops long before Egypt, even if Egypt were absorbing far more casualties.

The solution for the Israelis was to initiate combat at a time and place of their own choosing, preferably with surprise, as they did in 1956 and 1967. Failing that, as they did in 1973, the Israelis would be forced into a holding action they could not sustain and forced onto an offensive in which the risks of failure — and the possibility — would be substantial.

It was to the great benefit of Israel that Egyptian forces were generally poorly commanded and trained and that Egyptian war-fighting doctrine, derived from Britain and the Soviet Union, was not suited to the battle problem Israel posed. In 1967, Israel won its most complete victory over Egypt, as well as Jordan and Syria. It appeared to the Israelis that the Arabs in general and Egyptians in particular were culturally incapable of mastering modern warfare.

Thus it was an extraordinary shock when, just six years after their 1967 defeat, the Egyptians mounted a two-army assault across the Suez, coordinated with a simultaneous Syrian attack on the Golan Heights. Even more stunning than the assault was the operational security the Egyptians maintained and the degree of surprise they achieved. One of Israel’s fundamental assumptions was that Israeli intelligence would provide ample warning of an attack. And one of the fundamental assumptions of Israeli intelligence was that Egypt could not mount an attack while Israel maintained air superiority. Both assumptions were wrong. But the most important error was the assumption that Egypt could not, by itself, coordinate a massive and complex military operation. In the end, the Israelis defeated the Egyptians, but at the cost of the confidence they achieved in 1967 and a recognition that comfortable assumptions were impermissible in warfare in general and regarding Egypt in particular.

The Egyptians had also learned lessons. The most important was that the existence of the state of Israel did not represent a challenge to Egypt’s national interest. Israel existed across a fairly wide and inhospitable buffer zone — the Sinai Peninsula. The logistical problems involved in deploying a massive force to the east had resulted in three major defeats, while the single partial victory took place on much shorter lines of supply. Holding or taking the Sinai was difficult and possible only with a massive infusion of weapons and supplies from the outside, from the Soviet Union. This meant that Egypt was a hostage to Soviet interests. Egypt had a greater interest in breaking its dependency on the Soviets than in defeating Israel. It could do the former more readily than the latter.

 

(click here to enlarge image)

 

The Egyptian recognition that its interests in Israel were minimal and the Israeli recognition that eliminating the potential threat from Egypt guaranteed its national security have been the foundation of the regional balance since 1978. All other considerations — Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas and the rest — were trivial in comparison. Geography — the Sinai — made this strategic distancing possible. So did American aid to Egypt. The substitution of American weapons for Soviet ones in the years after the treaty achieved two things. First, they ended Egypt’s dependency on the Soviets. Second, they further guaranteed Israel’s security by creating an Egyptian army dependent on a steady flow of spare parts and contractors from the United States. Cut the flow and the Egyptian army would be crippled.

The governments of Anwar Sadat and then Hosni Mubarak were content with this arrangement. The generation that came to power with Gamal Nasser had fought four wars with Israel and had little stomach for any more. They had proved themselves in October 1973 on the Suez and had no appetite to fight again or to send their sons to war. It is not that they created an oasis of prosperity in Egypt. But they no longer had to go to war every few years, and they were able, as military officers, to live good lives. What is now regarded as corruption was then regarded as just rewards for bleeding in four wars against the Israelis.

Mubarak and the Military

But now is 33 years later, and the world has changed. The generation that fought is very old. Today’s Egyptian military trains with the Americans, and its officers pass through the American command and staff and war colleges. This generation has close ties to the United States, but not nearly as close ties to the British-trained generation that fought the Israelis or to Egypt’s former patrons, the Russians. Mubarak has locked the younger generation, in their fifties and sixties, out of senior command positions and away from the wealth his generation has accumulated. They want him out.

For this younger generation, the idea of Gamal Mubarak being allowed to take over the presidency was the last straw. They wanted the elder Mubarak to leave not only because he had ambitions for his son but also because he didn’t want to leave after more than a quarter century of pressure. Mubarak wanted guarantees that, if he left, his possessions, in addition to his honor, would remain intact. If Gamal could not be president, then no one’s promise had value. So Mubarak locked himself into position.

The cameras love demonstrations, but they are frequently not the real story. The demonstrators who wanted democracy are a real faction, but they don’t speak for the shopkeepers and peasants more interested in prosperity than wealth. Since Egypt is a Muslim country, the West freezes when anything happens, dreading the hand of Osama bin Laden. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood was once a powerful force, and it might become one again someday, but right now it is a shadow of its former self. What is going on now is a struggle within the military, between generations, for the future of the Egyptian military and therefore the heart of the Egyptian regime. Mubarak will leave, the younger officers will emerge, the constitution will make some changes and life will continue.

The Israelis will return to their complacency. They should not. The usual first warning of a heart attack is death. Among the fortunate, it is a mild coronary followed by a dramatic change of life style. The events in Egypt should be taken as a mild coronary and treated with great relief by Israel that it wasn’t worse.

Reconsidering the Israeli Position

I have laid out the reasons why the 1978 treaty is in Egypt’s national interest. I have left out two pieces. The first is ideology. The ideological tenor of the Middle East prior to 1978 was secular and socialist. Today it is increasingly Islamist. Egypt is not immune to this trend, even if the Muslim Brotherhood should not be seen as the embodiment of that threat. Second, military technology, skills and terrain have made Egypt a defensive power for the past 33 years. But military technology and skills can change, on both sides. Egyptian defensiveness is built on assumptions of Israeli military capability and interest. As Israeli ideology becomes more militant and as its capabilities grow, Egypt may be forced to reconsider its strategic posture. As new generations of officers arise, who have heard of war only from their grandfathers, the fear of war declines and the desire for glory grows. Combine that with ideology in Egypt and Israel and things change. They won’t change quickly — a generation of military transformation will be needed once regimes have changed and the decisions to prepare for war have been made — but they can change.

Two things from this should strike the Israelis. The first is how badly they need peace with Egypt. It is easy to forget what things were like 40 years back, but it is important to remember that the prosperity of Israel today depends in part on the treaty with Egypt. Iran is a distant abstraction, with a notional bomb whose completion date keeps moving. Israel can fight many wars with Egypt and win. It need lose only one. The second lesson is that Israel should do everything possible to make certain that the transfer of power in Egypt is from Mubarak to the next generation of military officers and that these officers maintain their credibility in Egypt. Whether Israel likes it or not, there is an Islamist movement in Egypt. Whether the new generation controls that movement as the previous one did or whether they succumb to it is the existential question for Israel. If the treaty with Egypt is the foundation of Israel’s national security, it is logical that the Israelis should do everything possible to preserve it.

This was not the fatal heart attack. It might not even have been more than indigestion. But recent events in Egypt point to a long-term problem with Israeli strategy. Given the strategic and ideological crosscurrents in Egypt, it is in Israel’s national interest to minimize the intensity of the ideological and make certain that Israel is not perceived as a threat. In Gaza, for example, Israel and Egypt may have shared a common interest in containing Hamas, and the next generation of Egyptian officers may share it as well. But what didn’t materialize in the streets this time could in the future: an Islamist rising. In that case, the Egyptian military might find it in its interest to preserve its power by accommodating the Islamists. At this point, Egypt becomes the problem and not part of the solution.

Keeping Egypt from coming to this is the imperative of military dispassion. If the long-term center of gravity of Israel’s national security is at least the neutrality of Egypt, then doing everything to maintain that is a military requirement. That military requirement must be carried out by political means. That requires the recognition of priorities. The future of Gaza or the precise borders of a Palestinian state are trivial compared to preserving the treaty with Egypt. If it is found that a particular political strategy undermines the strategic requirement, then that political strategy must be sacrificed.

In other words, the worst-case scenario for Israel would be a return to the pre-1978 relationship with Egypt without a settlement with the Palestinians. That would open the door for a potential two-front war with an intifada in the middle. To avoid that, the ideological pressure on Egypt must be eased, and that means a settlement with the Palestinians on less-than-optimal terms. The alternative is to stay the current course and let Israel take its chances. The question is where the greater safety lies. Israel has assumed that it lies with confrontation with the Palestinians. That’s true only if Egypt stays neutral. If the pressure on the Palestinians destabilizes Egypt, it is not the most prudent course.

There are those in Israel who would argue that any release in pressure on the Palestinians will be met with rejection. If that is true, then, in my view, that is catastrophic news for Israel. In due course, ideological shifts and recalculations of Israeli intentions will cause a change in Egyptian policy. This will take several decades to turn into effective military force, and the first conflicts may well end in Israeli victory. But, as I have said before, it must always be remembered that no matter how many times Israel wins, it need only lose once to be annihilated.

To some it means that Israel should remain as strong as possible. To me it means that Israel should avoid rolling the dice too often, regardless of how strong it thinks it is. The Mubarak affair might open a strategic reconsideration of the Israeli position.

Read more: Egypt, Israel and a Strategic Reconsideration | STRATFOR

Note:   Stratfor is an excellent source for up-to-date information offering a rather cold, matter of fact assessment without slipping in  political nuances.  On foreign affairs it would benefit the country greatly if we could receive as much information as possible about crises and issues without political tricks.

The above article was provided without charges…..as you member folks know, our Minnesota Prager Discussion Group has no treasury.

However, Statfor does in part rely on  donations for its support.  For those who can manage to support such worthy information sources, please go to Stratfor.com for further information.

Freedom Loving Europeans Woefully Conclude: “Time to move to Canada!”

……but not time to move to America….interestingly enough.   (As I would have guessed, by the way.) 

The following ‘wail’ comes from a Baron Bodissey, a regular writer at Gates of Vienna”

“When I was young, a lot of people in my hippie cohort talked about moving to Canada to avoid the draft and get away from the oppressive fascist government of Amerikkka under Richard Nixon.

Canada never appealed to me back then, but it seems a lot more attractive now. Statements like those in the video below could never come from any prominent politician, either Republican or Democrat, in the United States government.”

Comment:  “This plaintive exposes  a lot about the folks at Gates if Baron is the typical.   They know little about the United States.  Their hippie background on drugs and in riots against the US’s struggle in Vietnam still have a hold in their cranial homes. 

I don’t particularly care to defend Richard M. Nixon, but  even then Americans didn’t lack for personal freedoms during his administrations, certtainly not the right to speak freely….His crimes were elsewhere.   The Nixon America never persecuted or prosecuted folks as the Canadian Human Rights Commissions have….His administrations faced bombings, kidnappings, political murders, black racist violence which received much victimhood sympathies in the leftwing European press back then.  Those against Islamic violence are restrained  people voicing their views.

If Canada were the world’s leading political and military power, it would receive the brunt, the hate, the suspicions and bigotries which have been afforded the good old USA for many decades, now.  Even from our lovely neighbor, Canada.

Even during the present proIslamic this-and-that -administration of Barack Hussein Obama, there has been very little criticism  and no prosecution as far as I know, against  any group unhappy over Islamic violence and intimidation in the country.  Mr. Obama most of the time pretends Iran is just a wayward kid, one to be ignored.  Islam is too noble an institution to criticize, but that is about all.

It is at the universities, colleges and in many high schools where intolerance pops up against critics of Islam’s violence. It is here where punishments are exacted…..students and professors intimidated by the LEFT wing allegedly protecting the rights of Islam to compete against American conservatives.”

A Gates of Vienna reader wrote in the following in response to the above blog comment by Baron Bodessey:

“But Ive been noticing that Western Convervative Women are often at the forefront of the defending Western/European Civilization these days….like Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachman. They have more “credibility” than “old white men” in some circles, and thus are effective speakers in the defense of Western Civilization.

Similarly, Black Western Conservatives like Allen West and THIS ONE IS REALLY INTERESTING, Dambisa Moyo, a Zambian of all things (I encrouage you to look into this womans books and commentary.)

What do you make of that? Just throwing that observation, no fully formed thought out there.”

Further comment:  It is true, however, that there is very little political dialogue regarding the Islamic terrorist threat in Congress.   But, one must remember, we haven’t set up trials yet to persecute and prosecute critics of “Islam, the Peace-loving religion.”

Another Dollar Savings….End Public Funding of Political Campaigns

End Public Funding for Political Campaigns

“Government expenditures on election campaigns are an unnecessary burden on taxpayers that do nothing to reduce the influence of special interest money in politics.  The solution is to end all tax-paid subsidies for the political class, including public funding for presidential campaigns and party conventions, says the Washington Examiner.

The House of Representatives passed a bill that would do just that last week.  Not only would it save the Treasury $617 million over 10 years, but it would also put an end to the quadrennial porkfest that public financing creates for consultants and other professional election vendors who get involved in presidential primary campaigns.

Public presidential financing also has little popular support:

• In 2010, only 7.3 percent of tax filers checked the box on their 1040 forms that authorizes $3 to go into the presidential matching fund.
• Even worse, the presidential subsidy forces taxpayers to subsidize the largely symbolic major-party conventions.

Source: “No More Taxpayer Subsidies for Campaigns,” Washington Examiner, February 3, 2011.”

For text:

http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/editorials/2011/02/no-more-taxpayer-subsidies-campaigns

The above information was provided by National Center for Policy Analysis

Geert Wilders Back in Court for ‘Insulting’ Islam…..Same Trial, New Judges Cooking the Same Islamic Stew

the following is from Gates of Vienna:

“Geert Wilders’ new trial began today in Amsterdam. We have some material in Dutch which will be translated in due course, but in the meantime, here’s the advance report from Dutch News:

Wilders’ Inciting Hatred Trial Resumes in Front of New Judges

The trial of anti-Islam MP Geert Wilders on discrimination and inciting hatred charges resumes in Amsterdam on Monday.

Last October the trial was abandoned after senior court officials ruled several irregularities in the proceedings could be deemed prejudicial. New judges have now been appointed.

Judges last week rejected calls by the plaintiffs for new prosecutors to be appointed. Several of the groups which have pressed for legal action against Wilders are angry that the prosecution department had also called for not guilty verdicts on all charges during the first trial.

Proceedings

Today’s hearing will focus on the legal framework of the trial and Wilders’ lawyer Bram Moszkowicz is likely to call on the judges to say there is no case to answer, Nos television reports.

Once those legal arguments are out of the way, the proceedings will focus on determining which witnesses will be heard.

The leader of the anti-Islam PVV party faces several charges of inciting hatred and discrimination against Muslims, Moroccans and non-Western immigrants.

At his first trial, the MP wanted to call 17 witnesses including criminal law professor Theo Roos, several radical imams and Mohammed Bouyeri – the man who murdered film maker Theo van Gogh. Wilders has described Bouyeri as ‘living proof’ that Islam inspires people to violence.”

Below is the speech given by Geert Wilders on the opening day of his new trial on “hate speech” charges in Amsterdam. Many thanks to Vlaamse Leeuwin for the translation:

“The lights are going out all over Europe. All over the continent where our culture flourished and where man created freedom, prosperity and civilization. The foundation of the West is under attack everywhere.

All over Europe the elites are acting as the protectors of an ideology that has been bent on destroying us for fourteen centuries. An ideology that has sprung from the desert and that can produce only deserts because it does not give people freedom. The Islamic Mozart, the Islamic Gerard Reve [a Dutch author], the Islamic Bill Gates; they do not exist because without freedom there is no creativity. The ideology of Islam is especially noted for killing and oppression and can only produce societies that are backward and impoverished. Surprisingly, the elites do not want to hear any criticism of this ideology.

My trial is not an isolated incident. Only fools believe it is. All over Europe multicultural elites are waging total war against their populations. Their goal is to continue the strategy of mass immigration, which will ultimately result in an Islamic Europe — a Europe without freedom: Eurabia.

The lights are going out all over Europe. Anyone who thinks or speaks individually is at risk. Freedom-loving citizens who criticize Islam, or even merely suggest that there is a relationship between Islam and crime or honour killing, must suffer, and are threatened or criminalized. Those who speak the truth are in danger.

The lights are going out allover Europe. Everywhere the Orwellian thought police are at work, on the lookout for thought crimes everywhere, casting the populace back within the confines where it is allowed to think.

This trial is not about me. It is about something much greater. Freedom of speech is not the property of those who happen to belong to the elites of a country. It is an inalienable right, the birthright of our people. For centuries battles have been fought for it, and now it is being sacrificed to please a totalitarian ideology.

Future generations will look back at this trial and wonder who was right. Who defended freedom and who wanted to get rid of it.

The lights are going out all over Europe. Our freedom is being restricted everywhere, so I repeat what I said here last year:

It is not only the privilege, but also the duty of free people — and hence also my duty as a member of the Dutch Parliament — to speak out against any ideology that threatens freedom. Hence it is a right and a duty to speak the truth about the evil ideology that is called Islam. I hope that freedom of speech will emerge triumphant from this trial. I hope not only that I shall be acquitted, but especially that freedom of speech will continue to exist in the Netherlands and in Europe.”

Comment:  It should be noted that Europe isn’t alone where ‘elitists’ have censored, prosecuted and persecuted folks critical of  Islamic terrorism.   We need to look northward to Canada where countless Canadian citizens have been persecuted, some even prosecuted and jailed by, of all Orwellian language, Human Rights Commissions.  Note the names Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn as the most famous victims.

A ‘Must Read’ of the First Class!! Rumsfeld Writes His Views…..and writes them WELL

 

In an interview, the former secretary of defense explains how

Washington feuds harmed Iraq policy, and why the surge was

less  vital than you think.

Preface:  I  confess here  my own prejudices  as I offer you this excellent article by Kimberley Strassel reviewing Donald Rumsfeld’s “looking back” book, “Known and Unknown”.   I have not yet purchased the tome, but I intend to do so, even though I have not budgeted for the expenditure during these difficult economic times.

Donald Rumsfeld is my favorite political “star” ever to have appeared on the public stage.  Whenever then and whenever now (which is almost never, now, with the exception of his book) I would stop life to watch him perform on television.   He was in command at all times during his performances.

I looked at the American press then, as I do now as frauds.  They may not be as individuals.  I don’t know them as individuals, except via tv smart asses like David Gregory of today, Sam Donaldson of yesterday, and everybody in between.   Most of these are journalism people who in J-school learned how to write a headline and become a leftwinger as their main contributions toward learnings to massage their egos.  

‘Helen Thomas is a good example besides the above mentioned…and nearly everyone else who appear near a television camera or the New York Times.

Donald Rumsfeld in their company reduced these creature to the schools of fish they are every time he visited them.  His performances were among the best television I have every seen in my sixty plus years of viewing…..The National Geographic coverage of the explosion of Pinatuba might compete depending on my mood of the moment.

By the way President Kennedy was a superb  director over these school children as well.  Both were so gifted with knowledge and the ability to phrase words wonderfully effectively when you needed them.  Kennedy was far less ascerbic and so didn’t suffer at all in the “J” school writings.   Rummy was smeared, but I have to believe Rummy didnt “give a damn”, to quote  from the deep past.

Rumsfeld never failed to entertain me.   Every sadistic cell I had in my body was satisfied almost within the first five minutes of his “interview”, as he would toy catching his fish.  

Then came the day of the Rummy quote about “Knowns”.  “Known” befuddled this “J” school crowd and the school went into a tizzy…….Here is what Rummy said:

  “There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.”    …..the news print people couldn’t figure it out so they attacked its teacher.

The other day when it was announced his book had hit the market, some “journalists” reading  what their editors had prepared, pronounced that Rumsfeld had a reputation of skirting  questions from the news makers audience.

He did….especially when responding to the dumber and dumbest questions which nearly all were.   This isn’t a very well educated crowd, folks…..with the exception of Rummy, of course.

I have missed his performances since he was ousted in 2006…….that is until Kimberley’s work which I read from  my own copy of this morning’s Wall Street Journal….headed, “Rumsfeld’s “Slice of History”.

I love history.  I love Rumsfeld.  How could I miss this expectation of sheer intellectual and emotional enjoyment?  (I didn’t, for Kimberley did a good job, and I will shortly run off to buy Rummy’s book.

Kimberley Strassel:  “Rumsfeld’s “Slice of History:”

“In an interview, the former secretary of defense explains how Washington feuds harmed Iraq policy, and why the surge was less vital than you think.

‘I’d read other folks’ books about things I’d been involved in . . . and I’d think, ‘My goodness, that’s not my perspective,'” chuckles former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in an interview last Friday. “I remember talking to [former Secretary of State] George Shultz and he said, ‘Don, that’s the way it is. Everyone has their slice of history and you need to write yours one day so that it is part of the records.'”

History, meet Mr. Rumsfeld’s view. With today’s release of “Known and Unknown”—the 78-year-old’s memoir of his tenure as defense secretary under George W. Bush and Gerald Ford, his years in the Nixon administration and his three terms as an Illinois congressman—”Rummy” is offering his slice of history. As befits a man who has spent decades provoking Washington debate, his chronicle is direct and likely to inspire some shouting.

The usual Rumsfeld critics (including some in the Bush family circle) are rushing to categorize it as a “score-settling” account, but that’s a predictable (and tedious) judgment. At the heart of Mr. Rumsfeld’s book is an important critique of the Bush administration that has been largely missing from the debate over Iraq. The dominant narrative to date has been that a cowboy president and his posse of neocons went to war without adequate preparation and ran roughshod over doubts by more sober bureaucratic and strategic minds.

What Mr. Rumsfeld offers is a far more believable account of events, one that holds individuals responsible for failures of execution. He describes a White House with internal problems, at the heart of which was a National Security Council overseen in Mr. Bush’s first term by Condoleezza Rice. Ms. Rice’s style of management, argues Mr. Rumsfeld, led to indecision, which in turn led to the lack of a coherent post-invasion plan, to a sluggish transfer of power to Iraqis, and to a festering insurgency. If nothing else, this gives historians something valuable to ponder as they work on an honest appraisal of the Bush years.

Mr. Rumsfeld tells me that he sees his 815-page volume as a “contribution to the historic record”—not some breezy Washington tell-all. In his more than 40 years of public service, he kept extensive records of his votes, his meetings with presidents, and the more than 20,000 memos (known as “snowflakes”) he flurried on the Pentagon during his second run as defense secretary. Mr. Rumsfeld uses them as primary sources, which accounts for the book’s more than 1,300 end notes. He’s also digitized them so readers and historians can consult the evidence first-hand at http://www.rumsfeld.com.”

And yes, he has every intention of using this material to change history’s view of past controversies—some that go way back. One example: The book notes a “particularly stubborn . . . myth”: the charge that, as White House chief of staff, Mr. Rumsfeld pushed President Ford to appoint George H.W. Bush as CIA director, in order to banish a rival. Mr. Rumsfeld cites the memo he provided the president—”at [Ford’s] request”—evaluating the strength of CIA candidates. It shows that, in fact, he placed the elder Mr. Bush “below the line” on his list—meaning, he was not a “top recommendation” (ouch).

Mr. Rumsfeld devotes an early chapter to his meditations on the purpose of the National Security Council (NSC), accompanied by his judgment that National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice did a poor job of airing and debating substantive disagreements between the State and Defense departments. Rivalries between State and Defense are nothing new, yet Ms. Rice’s most “notable feature” of management, writes Mr. Rumsfeld, “was her commitment, whenever possible, to ‘bridging’ differences between the agencies, rather than bringing those differences to the President for decisions.”

“Condi Rice is a very accomplished human being,” he says in our interview, and “she had an academic background. Blending things and delaying things is okay in the academic world. She developed a very strong relationship with the president, which is critically important. And yet one of the adverse aspects of the way things functioned—and I wouldn’t use the word ‘dysfunction’—is that things did get delayed, and the president didn’t get served up, in a crisp way, options that he could choose among.”

The memoir relates notable instances when this dynamic played out, but none with more consequence than the muddled plan for postwar Iraq. The Defense Department pushed early on “to do what we’d done in Afghanistan”—where a tribal loya jirga had quickly anointed Hamid Karzai as leader. “The goal was to move quickly to have an Iraqi face on the leadership in the country, as opposed to a foreign occupation.” Mr. Rumsfeld’s early takeaway from NSC meetings was that “the president agreed.”

Yet Colin Powell’s State Department was adamantly opposed. It was suspicious of allowing Iraqi exiles to help govern, claiming they’d undermine “legitimacy.” It also didn’t believe a joint U.S.-Iraqi power-sharing agreement would work. These were clear, substantive policy differences, yet in Mr. Rumsfeld’s telling, Ms. Rice allowed the impasse to drag on.

The result was the long, damaging regency of Paul Bremer as the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority—which Mr. Rumsfeld believes helped inspire the initial Iraq insurgency. Mr. Bremer, who set up shop in one of Saddam’s opulent palaces, continued to postpone the creation of an Iraqi transitional government. He instead appointed a “governing council” of Iraqis but refused to give even them any responsibility. The result: delays in elections and in building post-Saddam institutions.

“You are always better having a president look at each option, at the pros and cons, and make a decision among them, than trying to merge them,” says Mr. Rumsfeld, especially when positions are “contradictory to a certain extent.”

Mr. Rumsfeld also faults today’s Washington culture, with a hyperaggressive Congress and more “litigious society.” During his earlier Washington years, recalls Mr. Rumsfeld, Henry Kissinger wrote clear memoranda outlining “the pros and cons” for the president. But in the modern NSC there’s a reluctance to write things down—lest it land in an investigation.

The lack of clear decision-making also led to blurred authority, which Mr. Powell’s State Department used to get the upper hand in turf battles. Ms. Rice used it too, in late 2003, to wrest more personal control over postwar operations via her “Iraqi Stabilization Group”—a job for which Mr. Rumsfeld writes that Ms. Rice and her staff did not have “the interest or skill.”

Officially, Mr. Bremer reported to Mr. Rumsfeld. But he “viewed himself as the president’s man, had a background in the State Department, and a relationship with Condi Rice,” says Mr. Rumsfeld. So Mr. Bremer chose what guidance he preferred, which Mr. Rumsfeld describes as the equivalent of having “four or eight hands on the steering wheel.” Critical issues—whom the U.S. should support, who should have power, how quickly to turn over authority—lingered. I ask Mr. Rumsfeld why he didn’t simply fire Mr. Bremer. He says he couldn’t. Mr. Bremer was “a presidential envoy” and served at Mr. Bush’s pleasure.

Mr. Rumsfeld somewhat shields the president in his book. When the president was brought options, insists Mr. Rumsfeld, “he was perfectly willing” to make decisions. Then again, the book makes clear that Mr. Bush was aware of the ugly conflicts between State and Defense. And there’s no getting around Mr. Bush’s responsibility as wartime manager and Ms. Rice’s boss.

Mr. Rumsfeld is less blunt about his own department’s mistakes, though he does sidle into them. One question is why it took so long to replace Gens. George Casey and John Abizaid, on whose watch the Iraqi insurgency grew. Mr. Rumsfeld’s memoir notes that no one on the NSC or the Joint Chiefs had recommended they be removed by the autumn of 2006, Mr. Rumsfeld’s last months on the job. Yet he does acknowledge a visit in September of 2006 from retired Gen. Jack Keane, a key architect of the surge, who warned that the two generals were not “sufficiently aware of the gravity of the situation.” When I ask Mr. Rumsfeld if they were indeed left in Iraq too long, he concedes: “In retrospect, you could make that case.”

He isn’t as willing to acknowledge that he was slow to address Iraq’s insurgency. It was never one insurgency, he says, but rather it “evolved, and took different shapes.” The first wave, he says, was “Saddam and his Baathists attempting to regain power” aided by “criminals” whom Saddam had released from jail. Then came the influx of terrorists—”facilitated through Damascus”—coming to fight against Americans. Al Qaeda joined the fray, as did a Shiite uprising under Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army. “We couldn’t lose any battles over there, but we couldn’t beat them militarily,” he says. “Because there was no one to beat. It was a totally unconventional asymmetrical circumstance.”

Mr. Rumsfeld thus takes an unorthodox view of the significance of President Bush’s surge, which began to take effect in early 2007. He argues that by 2006 things were, in fact, improving in Iraq. The Anbar Awakening—which Mr. Rumsfeld credits as beginning in the fall of 2006—”had convinced a lot of Sunnis they didn’t want to be associated with al Qaeda,” and “the government of Iraq was evolving the ability to take on some of the radicals” with the help of Iraqi security forces that had become “very capable.”

As a result, he argues, the force of President Bush’s surge was as much “psychological” as anything else. “The president’s decision galvanized the opinion in Iraq. It said: ‘Look, if you think it is going to go to the insurgents, you are wrong.'” The fact of the statement, argues Mr. Rumsfeld, mattered as much as did the increase of troops “tactically or strategically.”

Though viewed by many as the spear of Mr. Bush’s “freedom agenda,” Mr. Rumsfeld also expresses misgivings about “nation-building.” He disagrees with the “Pottery Barn rule”—attributed to Mr. Powell—that “if you break it, you own it,” arguing Iraq was already broken under Saddam. While he acknowledges that the U.S. had security obligations to Iraq, he expresses discomfort with Mr. Bush’s broad promises for democracy, and he worries that countries too frequently develop an overreliance on the U.S.

This is part of his answer when I ask what went wrong (again) in Afghanistan. He notes that committed “Islamists” don’t just “disappear.” “We’ve given them a chance, a good chance, to fashion a country that can have the kind of security that the Taliban didn’t permit. The Afghan people have to decide.”

Mr. Rumsfeld’s critics are bitter that his memoir didn’t go the obvious commercial route, serving up a grand apology for his role in the wars. Yet readers might be appreciative to find themselves in possession of a serious memoir, more in keeping with the older Washington tradition of Dean Acheson or Henry Kissinger. As might the historians.”

Ms. Strassel writes the Journal’s Potomac Watch column.

The Obamafication of the American School

It is my contention that the Left over the past few decades has been  transforming the American public school into Marxist  madrassas.

Please read this following article titled, “At Public School AntiAmericanism Hides in Plain Sight!” , by Barry Rubin at Pajamas Media:

“This little true anecdote — based on firsthand knowledge — is terribly sad. A pre-teenage boy, living in the United States with his affluent family from South America, attends an American public school in the eastern part of the country. They are not immigrants. He speaks English without an accent and is not physically identifiable as belonging to any particular ethnic group.

Recently, he was raising money for the homeless with a friend at a school fair. At the first of the tables he passed, the salesman invited him to take a look at his merchandise — soccer balls and shirts. The boy became very upset.

“That’s racist,” he complained to his friend.

“Why?” asked the schoolmate.

“That’s what they think of us Mexicans. All we are interested in is soccer and tacos.”

In other words, he innocently had turned a simple situation — a guy wanted to sell merchandise, for charity, to boys of a soccer-crazy age — into a racist incident.

The boy didn’t do anything or say anything to anyone other than his friend. That’s just the way he reacted to it. And this is happening in America — not to mention Canada and Europe — tens of thousands of times each day. We just don’t hear about it.

To take a small incident as proof of a much wider phenomenon is always open to question. Yet I can’t help but think — especially since I know what he’s been taught in the classroom — that this boy’s paranoia and quickness to anger is a result of the indoctrination he is getting in public school.

He lacks an interest in politics. He enjoys a very calm personality. He isn’t prone to exaggeration or anger, which makes this incident all the more shocking. Oh, and one other thing: he does love soccer.

Tell people over and over again that America is mostly or even mainly characterized by racism, and you are teaching people to hate America. Or, as one eleven-year-old girl from another South American family told her classmates: “We hate America, but our parents are making us live here.”

Kids in the class constantly use the word “racist,” even when colors completely unassociated with human beings are mentioned — a black cat, for example, or automobile.

What happens when you tell young people over and over again that the most important fact of American history is the internment of Japanese during World War Two? In a single year, I watched as fourth graders were assigned four different readings on that topic while spending ten minutes on George Washington and zero on Abraham Lincoln. Their sole reading on September 11 was a story on how Kenyans reacted to the event — with no identification of who had carried out the attack.

I could supply four score and seven more very specific first-hand examples, based on a close observation of my son’s almost two years in an American public school. Whether he is being subjected to one of the school plans developed by unrepentant anti-American terrorist Bill Ayers, who has had a certain influence on contemporary American leadership, I cannot say.

Yet this is what’s really going on in the America experienced by our eleven-year-olds, and, no doubt, by their older and younger siblings as well. This daily experience isn’t covered in the media. Parents hardly ever hear about it.

One can only discover this largely hidden world by doing anthropological fieldwork among children. The fact that the great majority of parents have no idea about these things — even those supposedly obsessed with their children’s education — is a source of constant amazement to me. I’m not talking about approval here, but simple ignorance.

What appears in textbooks will curl your hair. And I’m not talking about relatively high-profile issues like teaching about Islam (a topic that has never even been mentioned in my son’s school), but how they describe the economic system or world history. Some examples, all based on first-hand experience:

• A math exercise in which the teacher uses a deck of playing cards, each of which is marked “Vote Obama” on the back.

• A current-events discussion in which, even though Junior Scholastic referred to the Times Square bomber as an “Islamist terrorist,” the only correct answer is that this Taliban-backed Pakistani immigrant is a “home-grown terrorist.”

• Days spent in unquestioning study of man-made global warming, with no mention even of a controversy. One student remarks afterward, “Due to global warming, it will soon be snowing in Africa.”

• Despite having music class, the following dialogue takes place:

Father: “Did you learn the Star Spangled Banner?”

Son looks puzzled.

Daughter helpfully sings, “You know, ‘Oh, say can you see …!’”

Son: “What’s that?”

• On Memorial Day, son draws pictures of soldiers during free time in school; teacher confiscates, makes and files photocopies, and warns him never to do that again.

This situation, to put it mildly, is a social disaster. The bills for this calamity will be paid in the future, just as today we are living in the shadow of the radical 1960s come to cultural, ideological, and political power.

“Political correctness” and “multiculturalism” are creating a nation full of thin-skinned people ready to identify virtually anything as racist or discriminatory. It is conditioning young people to believe instinctively that ours is a fundamentally contemptible society, riddled with haters and racists who are out to get them or anyone who constitutes “the other.” It is instructing them that freedom of speech does not and should not apply to vast swaths of public, and perhaps private, life.

While all of this indoctrination is supposed to reduce friction, the fact is that it is having the opposite effect, setting up a future of incredible antagonism, hatred, and pain. The mentality of perpetual victimhood, endless grievances, and bitter divisiveness is set to cripple the United States. In Europe and Canada, the results are likely to be even worse.

Of course, this is no accident, but a form of political mobilization in which certain viewpoints will be demonized as unacceptable because they are based on bias. The only redeeming factor is that it is not universal but restricted — at least for the present — to certain states and counties where such curricula have been imposed.

In the Gettysburg Address, President Abraham Lincoln called America “a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Yet today, if a large proportion of American schoolchildren are taught that America is a nation conceived in bigotry and dedicated to the propositions of racism, sexism, bigotry, male chauvinism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, and homophobia, what’s going to happen?

Lincoln answered that one in another speech: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”  That was in June 1858, three years before a Civil War broke out.”

The Disease of Political Correctness Was a Killer in Fort Hood

The title of this excellent article, “Fort Hood Victims Sacrificed for Political Correctness”, was written by Michael Walsh at the New York Post.

The American public should understand clearly and fully, that Political Correctness is a Cultural Censorship of subject and language fostered by the leftwing of today’s Democrat Party, originating from the bigotries taught in the vast majorities of American colleges, universities and public schools today.  It is a Marxist driven phenomenon to control thought and speech.  Its graduates teach its  censorship rules in many Liberal Establishment Christian Churches and Parishes and is exceptionally popular doctrine almost universally among the American Leftwing Jewish populations.

It is an insidious and  diseased concept infecting the moral vanities of  leftwing  westerners’ feelings of  guilt emanating from  500 years of white man’s contributions to the world’s development.     It has become the basis of American Marxist  policies  of  balkanizing America into weak colonies of multicultural tribes.

Mr. Walsh writes about the  Fort Hood Massacre caused by the Leftwing disease called, Political Correctness:”Let’s start by stating the most obvious conclusion to be drawn from the re cent report by Sens. Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins concerning the Fort Hood massacre: Unless we expunge it from our national discourse, political correctness gets Americans killed.

On Nov. 5, 2009, Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, an American citizen, a radicalized Muslim, a psychiatrist and, in the words of the report, “a ticking time bomb,” shot up a soldier readiness center on America’s largest active-duty Army base, killing 12 military personnel and one civilian, and wounding 32 others. It was a direct assault on the armed forces of the United States by a self-proclaimed “Soldier of Allah” (written on his business cards) who shouted the Muslim incantation Allahu akbar before opening fire.

It’s hard to imagine a clearer example of the asymmetrical warfare a free and welcoming country fights against cowardly opponents who refuse to abide by the laws of war, but there it was.

In any other war, someone like Maj. Hasan would never have gotten close to the Army, never have been handled with kid gloves, and never been promoted.

What was the Army thinking? That if we could just get our enemies to like us, all this unpleasantness will soon be over?

America bent over backward after 9/11 to assure Muslims that we weren’t at war with Islam. Our country offered the hand of friendship to people like Maj. Hasan — ignoring his radicalism, his praise of suicide bombers, his sympathy for Osama bin Laden and his belief that his religion, as the report notes, “took precedence over the US Constitution he swore to support and defend as a US military officer . . . Hasan’s statements about the primacy of religious law occurred as he was supporting a violent extremist interpretation of Islam and suggesting that this radical ideology justified opposition to US policy and could lead to fratricide in the ranks.”

He certainly was right about that.

Did anybody, from the fruit-salad brass to our crack intelligence services, do anything about it? Of course not.

Lieberman and Collins put their fingers on the problem: “Despite Hasan’s overt displays of radicalization to violent Islamist extremism, Hasan’s superiors failed to discipline him, refer him to counterintelligence officials or seek to discharge him. One of the officers who reported Hasan to superiors opined that Hasan was permitted to remain in service because of ‘political correctness’ and ignorance of religious practices.”

It couldn’t be much clearer than that.

Since the Clinton administration, the military has been subjected to an unprecedented assault on its core values, its traditions and its honor. It’s become a laboratory for social experiment as its desk-jockey officer corps clamber up the greasy pole of promotion — and, just as in civilian life, getting people like Maj. Hasan promoted in the name of the dubious virtue “diversity” was one such path.

It’s time for that to stop. If anybody should be in the business of clear-headed threat analysis, it’s the US military. “Political correctness,” which literally seeks to make certain speech unthinkable, should have no place in a free society.

On Dec. 8, President Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed a joint session of Congress. We all remember his famous opening: “Yesterday, Dec. 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy . . .” But the words that followed were what rallied Americans:

“As commander-in-chief of the Army and Navy I have directed that all measures be taken for our defense, that always will our whole nation remember the character of the onslaught against us. No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people, in their righteous might, will win through to absolute victory . . . We will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us.”

The men and women of our armed forces are fully prepared to die on the battlefield, when we ask them to. What we should never do is ask them to die on the altar of political correctness.”

Further comment:   This Leftwing disease is particularly virulent in Canada and Western Europe to weaken European resolve to remain culturally free from the ravages and cultural atrocities of militant ISLAM.

Dick Morris: “Lies, Damn Lies, and Unemployment Statistics”

The drop in unemployment the Obama Administration reported for January is totally phony.  Real, unweighted data showed an increase from 9.1% to 9.8% in joblessness rather than a cut in the highly weighted figure from 9.4% to 9.0%.
   
                            Put those weighted numbers on a diet!

Economist Jim Fitzgibbon, head of the Highlander Fund, calls the report “worthless” noting that “the entire report is seasonally adjusted to be positive while the non-seasonally adjusted data is just awful.”      While the seasonally adjusted jobless rate dropped from 9.8% in November to 9.0% now, the non-adjusted data went from 9.1% in November to 9.8% now – the exact reverse!Go to the Bureau of Labor Statistics for the real data:   http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm   Fitzgibbon calls the entire report a “statistical mirage.”

And, of course, Obama “achieved” the drop in the unemployment rate not by reducing the numerator (the number of jobless) but by cutting the denominator (the total workforce).  500,000 Americans despaired of ever getting a job and left the workforce, bringing the jobless rate down.
 
Fitzgibbon reports that the net loss of jobs continues to this day with 8,750,000 eliminated rather than the 8,363,000 the Administration reports.  “Without aggressively positive seasonal adjustments for January, 2011 the +39,000 payroll increase would have been closer to a loss of -52,000.”
 
Obama has had two raging successes in his term:
 
1.  He has slashed unemployment by persuading millions to give up hope and leave the labor force; and

2.  He has cut illegal immigration by casting the United States into a permanent job shortage.
 
Some achievements!

Comment:  Of all the mileage coming from Obama’s mouth nearly every day before some camera or another, none of it can be recognized as anything sincere or honest.

He is a supreme Marxist propagandist…..a man with a core he does not dare express openly to the public.

 

HBOs “Reagan”…Where’s the Rest of Him

Writing here personally, there are very, very vew honorable Americans to admire over the past 50 years.   America’s art world is a garbage dump dominated by the sewers of Hollywood and television.  There are many heroes and antiheroes in the country’s sport world during that same half century.

There are countless, usually nameless heroes fighting democracy’s wars on the world’s perifer

“The new documentary Reagan treats its subject in as fair and balanced a way as would seem possible — for a while.

Liberal filmmaker Eugene Jarecki (Why We Fight) shows how a handsome radio broadcaster named Ronald Reagan channeled his ambition into a film career that gave way to a remarkable political run.

But once we see Reagan taking the oath of office, Jarecki’s ability to rein in his ideology collapses. The film lulls conservative viewers into a sense of calm only to trap them into a dishonest account of the 40th president’s legacy.

Reagan, screened at the Sundance Film Festival last month, makes its TV debut at 9 pm EST on Monday, February 7, on HBO.

Jarecki sets his trap early, using a musty clip of Reagan discussing how images don’t always match the reality.

“Seldom, if ever, do we ask if the images are true to the original. Even less do we question how the images are created. This is probably more true of presidents in our country because of the intense spotlight that follows their every move,” Reagan says.

Jarecki wants to rob the right of using Reagan, or at least the symbol he’s become, as a rallying point.

The film begins with the outpouring of affection during Reagan’s public funeral, then segues to Reagan’s teen days as a near-sighted lifeguard.

He was a dashing young man who made his own luck, and for a while that combination helped him land a series of big screen roles. But after serving in the military during World War II, Reagan returned to a film industry where antiheroes were the hot new trend. A straight up hero type need not apply.

So he became president of the Screen Actors Guild, a position that shifted his political compass from a self-described “hemophiliac liberal” to a conservative. He later served six years as a GE spokesman, letting him flex his budding political ideals to the consternation of his bosses.

That’s where Reagan learned to sell himself and his political principles, according to his son, Ron Reagan, Jr.

Jarecki’s film to this point relies on traditional documentary techniques to fill in Reagan’s formative years. The tone is reverential, not flashy. The content may lack depth, but it’s breezily stitched together in a way that should enlighten those who know little about Reagan prior to his years in the Oval Office.

The first sign that the fix is in comes in retelling the end of the Iranian hostage crises and the dawn of Reagan‘s presidency. A voice tells us Reagan had nothing to do with the hostages’ release, preferring to give credit to outgoing President Jimmy Carter even though common sense tells you the pressure of a new, no-nonsense commander in chief clearly made it happen.

Reagan recalls the obvious highlights of the president’s momentous two terms, from the assassination attempt in 1981 to the Iran-Contra scandal which nearly wrecked his presidency.

The film takes direct aim at Reaganomics while ignoring how the president’s policies caused the economy to come roaring back to life.

It’s here where Jarecki really puts his thumb on the scales of documentary justice. The number of Reagan supporters shown on screen drops, and his critics take over. For example, the film focuses on a small town called Dixon to prove how wrongheaded Reagan’s policies were for the country, trotting out images of distressed neighborhoods and people waiting in lines for work. Only Reagan economist Arthur Laffer is allowed to defend the policies, and by omitting its positive results he’s essentially discredited.

Talk about selective editing.

Yes, the film calls upon old Reagan allies like James Baker and George Shultz to describe Reagan and his policies, and it shrewdly doesn’t recruit any far-left types from The Nation or Media Matters to poison the narrative. But it doesn’t use them to defend his administration’s policies.

The lengthy segment on Iran-Contra is deservedly critical, and the only defense offered up is by Reagan’s son who weakly claims his father meant well in breaking the law.

Reagan really falters when trying to capture the bigger picture. The film diminishes the president’s role in defeating Communism, gives little attention to how his optimism cheered the nation, and claims his policies amounted to a “transfer of wealth” from the poor to the rich.

The director’s dodgiest tactic comes via a military veteran used throughout the movie to sing Reagan’s praises. Why does Jarecki keep returning to this fellow? Why should he matter so much? We learn why in the documentary’s waning moments when the veteran slams America and its capitalistic system.

The film also tries to pin the country’s current deficit woes on Reagan as well as the subsequent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which, the film implies, were all about oil.

Reagan is textbook documentary bias masquerading as an honest assessment of a transformative president.

Christian Toto is a freelance writer for The Washington Times. His work has appeared in People magazine, MovieMaker Magazine, The Denver Post, The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and boxofficemagazine.com. He also contributes movie radio commentary to three stations as well as the nationally syndicated Dennis Miller Show and runs the blog What Would Toto Watch?