I just got an email with this story...another good reason for supporting Trump

In 1991, at the end of Desert Storm, a 19 yr old US Army Cavalry Scout Private who had just spent 8 months at war sat out on a street at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia.

He sat there on his duffle bag with his Battalion around him for 4 days waiting for the buses to come and take him to the King Fahad Airport so he could go home.

Unfortunately, the politicians of the day never planned for how to bring so many soldiers home after the war ended so there was a shortage of planes. Politicians are great at talking, but terrible at doing. Finally, the buses came, and took the young man to the airport.

The planes waiting were from Tower Air. The owner of Tower Air had volunteered his planes and staff to bring soldiers home for the cost of fuel only. Happily, the young veteran got home just in time for Easter weekend in 1991, and spent that time emotionally healing with friends and family surrounding him.

That Private was me.

The Airline owner - Donald J Trump.

That is why I will v**e Trump. Loyalty for loyalty, respect for respect. Any questions?

Written by Ron Knouse

I think the elite of GOP are ran by Mr. Romney and I certainly wonder why he just won't shut up. He lost big time!! I think it's just jealousy..that evil green-eyed monster..

H**e is a very viscous and strong word and one that we really don’t mean and should use less frequently. We use it freely when in fact we actually dislike. However, it has the punch that emphasizes our strong feelings about a particular subject; therefore I’ll be using the word H**E in the following lists of dislikes because they really need that added Punch.

I H**E the fact that Obama, that weasel, has escaped his rightfully due station in the annals of history by not having impeachment added to his legacy before leaving office. He is fortunate to have been President during a time of the weakest Republican Leadership in political history. He’ll still be recorded as the most destructive and anti-American Muslim President in the history of the United States of America.

I H**E the Progressive movement, with the help of the Democrat Socialist Party and the Department of Education for their effectiveness and ease with which they have dumbed down, uneducated, or failed to continue to educate the citizens of this country. A large percent of High school graduates can no longer tell you what countries border the United States. Very few would be able to tell you how many U.S. Senators their state is allowed, or even name one; also a large majority of college graduates can do little better, with the exception of Hillsdale College of Michigan, which every student must know in order to graduate. Thank God there are still a few colleges determined to produce educated citizens. I believe our education system in this country should first and foremost be primarily concerned with producing good citizenship and continue from there. But no, the progressives running the education department and to a large part this country, can’t have that because with a civically educated society, they would no longer exist.

I H**E the Republican Leadership for their betrayal of their conservative base and their responsibility for the creation of an egotistical f*****t to possibly become the nominee of the Republican Party.

I H**E the fact that this F*****t they have created is now threatening the nation with r**ts if he is not given the nomination even if he doesn’t have enough delegates to earn it. He doesn’t believe in playing by the rules of a contested convention and unfortunately most of his backers feel he has that right; pointing out again their lack of knowledge and my assertion of the dumbing-down of America.
I H**E to be placed in a position of having to v**e for the lesser of two evils for President of the United State, if in fact Trump actually becomes the Republican nominee.

I H**E the fact that surveys show many v**ers would more likely v**e for a candidate because of attacks upon them… What happened to common sense, principles, or core values?

I H**E the fact that the socialist Senator Sanders can draw more to his political soap box than the Democrat candidate, Hillary Clinton; although there is little difference between their political philosophies. This proves the war against socialism has failed badly in this country and all my feeble efforts over the past couple decades mattered naught.

I H**E the ease with which the Islamic and other national influences have been so readily accepted by a society overly anxious to accommodate that which is destructive to our society; that which has changed our society from one that was based upon Christian principals to one of secularism that is so contrary to everything our social and national conscience was founded upon.

I H**E the ease with which those staunch conservatives of the past, in word and deed, that I have praised and honored over the years have so easily succumbed to the Demagogue and betrayed their conservative principals i.e., Coulter, Angles, Hannity, Palin and many others. The future holds little lasting value to those that so readily and obviously sell their souls for so little gain.

God, please help America, because it’s obvious that a large portion of our citizens will not!

Huck

1) What exactly do you have against small unintrusive government, fiscal responsibility in government, and individual rights & individual freedom that you do not find in socialism or c*******m ??? --- As well as the conservative values of honesty, discipline, personal integrity, responsibility and accountability.

2) If Conservatism is so irrational as you claim, please explain how it is that no dictatorship or Marxist government has ever come anywhere close to the prosperity & military strength of America's history of Covservate Capitolism? Surly you know that no other ideology has lifted so many out of poverty & squalor as the Conservative's ideology of Capitolism. I'd bet big money you won't and in fact can't answer those questions. Only a total degenerate lowlife could have problems with those things.

MY ANSWERE TO ALL 3 OF THEM: Excuses & wrongheaded accusations, with no appreciation of humor. Thanks for proving me right that there is no way you could answer those two questions without divulging yourselves as a degenerate anti-Americans subversive fools. You are all a testament to the effectiveness of Marxist propaganda and it's ability to create useful i***ts, (no wonder you scream r****t in order to avoid t***h & debate) --- useful i***ts whose idol is a pathological liar who became a trained Deceiver in the c*******t radical revolutionary & "weather underground" terrorist Bill Ayer's living room. Your thinking is degenerate and that's why it's impossible for you, to answer the questions with a well reasoned rational reply.

A look back at what the Black Panthers did to deserve Beyoncé's rousing tribute at the Super Bowl.

Beyoncé Knowles. Everyone knows her simply as Beyoncé, the multi-talented superstar wife of music-industry legend Jay Z. She's also the glamorous and magnetic “Bey,” as President Barack Obama affectionately calls her. She's held fundraisers for the President, performed at the White House, and cultivated a warm friendship with both Mr. and Mrs. Obama. Beyoncé often turns up at NBA basketball games, where she and her hubby can typically be seen in their courtside seats, soaking up the love of starstruck fans, broadcasters, and ballplayers alike. This past Sunday, as part of the Super Bowl halftime show, Beyoncé put on a performance that served as an ode to the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Black Panther Party. Her all-black female backup dancers proudly donned the Panthers' signature black berets atop their '60s Afro hairstyles, and emphatically raised their fists in the Panthers' famous Black Power salute. In light of the passion with which so many screaming youngsters in attendance rocked and gyrated orgasmically to Beyoncé's every move and word, it's worth taking a moment to consider exactly who the Black Panthers were, and what did they do to deserve such a tribute from the lovely Bey.

The Black Panther Party was born as an outgrowth of the Oakland, California street gang of Huey Newton, a 24-year-old man whose only prior discernible achievements had been as a vicious thug, thief, and pimp. To define the Panthers' mission, Newton in 1966 drafted a Ten-Point Program charging that because America's “r****t government” had collaborated with “the capitalists” to “rob” the “Black Community” blind, that same government was now morally “obligated,” as a form of restitution, to give all b****s “employment or a guaranteed income” as well as taxpayer-funded “land, bread, housing, education, [and] clothing” until the end of time. Moreover, Newton argued that “all Black people should be released from … jails and prisons because they have not received a fair and impartial trial.” He also issued a call for b****s to “arm themselves for self-defense,” which was in fact an incitement to a race war. As Panther “minister of culture” Emory Douglas put it in 1970: “The only way to make this r****t U.S. government administer justice to the people it is oppressing, is … by taking up arms against this government, k*****g the officials, until the reactionary forces … are dead, and those that are left turn their weapons on their superiors.”

In a similarly impassioned speech in the late Sixties, Panther member David Hilliard
 denounced “r****t, f*****t America” as a loathsome country “run by a s***e oligarchy and brigandish criminals.” He condemned contemporary white people and their collective forefathers as “genocidal murderers,” “ens***ers,” and “exploiters” of the lowest order. And for good measure, Hilliard dismissed “the whole damn” Constitution as a document that was “invalid in regards to B****s in particular.”

Portraying law-enforcement officers as the indisputably r****t agents of a r****t nation, the Panthers regularly tried to defy and provoke police—“pigs,” as they contemptuously called them—by appearing in public places carrying loaded firearms. On May 2, 1967, for instance, more than two-dozen Panthers brandishing guns famously walked into a meeting of the California State Assembly to protest a proposed piece of legislation. Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver acknowledged years later (in 1986): “We [Panthers] would go out and ambush cops, but if we got caught we would blame it on them and claim innocence.”

Of course, ambushing the police wasn't the only thing the Panthers knew how to do. They also perfected the fine arts of dealing drugs, pimping prostitutes, extorting money, stealing property, beating people senseless, and on at least a dozen occasions, committing homicide. In 1969 alone, Panther members were arrested 348 times for murder, armed robbery, rape, and burglary. How often did they commit these and other serious crimes without getting arrested? That's anybody's guess.

Because the Panthers h**ed America, they naturally detested capitalism and revered C*******m. David Hilliard, for one, lauded the many graces of “Marxism-Leninism.” Eldridge Cleaver once wrote that “if you look around the world, you will see that the only countries which have liberated themselves and managed to withstand the tide of counter-revolution are precisely those countries that have strongly Marxist-Leninist parties.” The Panthers made Mao Zedong's iconic Red Book required reading for all their members, and sold copies of it to students at UC Berkeley to raise funds for the purchase of shotguns. And for guidance in how to establish revolutionary socialism in the United States, the Panthers studied the works of Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Che Guevara, Ho Chi Minh, and Frantz Fanon. Historian John Patrick Diggins writes that the Panthers “adopted a 'Marxist-Leninist' amalgam that succeeded in combining nationalism with socialism, preaching self-determination along with class struggle.”

The Panthers maintained that b****s were little more than prisoners of an “internal colony” in America, a colony whose liberation could be effectuated only by armed revolution. Tom Hayden, the New Left radical who founded the Students for a Democratic Society and fully expected that a race war would soon engulf the United States, admiringly dubbed the Panthers as “America's Vietcong”—likening them to the C*******t guerrillas who were k*****g U.S. forces in Southeast Asia. In September 1968, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover described the Panthers as the single “greatest threat to the internal security of the country.” Much more recently, historian Ronald Radosh described them as “a group of Stalinist thugs who murdered and k**led both police and their own internal dissenters.” And in a Sixty Minutes interview in 1997, none other than Eldridge Cleaver conceded: “If people had listened to Huey Newton and me in the 1960s, there would have been a holocaust in this country.”

These, then, were the Black Panthers. These were the anarchic, murderous barbarians whom Beyoncé chose to honor as voices of “justice” during her insipid Super Bowl halftime performance. It was nothing more, and nothing less, than the grotesque glorification of r****m—a politically correct brand.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/261780/reflections-panthers-john-perazzo

His administration often throws out offers of how to spend money on Fridays and this time he selected a real time to put out his last attempt at getting a budget accepted by the Congress. They have been known to v**e unanimously against one of his attempts and nearly that much on others. This time he wants to raise taxes of all kinds and with what he wants to do with energy taxes he just can't win out. What part of his actual legacy do they think this budget will serve to uphold?

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2016/02/10/while-we-were-focused-on-new-hampshire-obama-proposed-trillions-in-tax-hikes-n2117166?utm_source=thdailypm&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl_pm&newsletterad=

The Left helped fuel Islamic terrorism -- and it keeps it going.

Men and women, some whose clothes were still marked with gray ash, walked dazedly toward Union Square. Many did not know what to do or where to go. So they kept on walking. They knew the country was under attack, but they did not know how bad it was or what might still be heading for them.

Behind them lay a changed city and thousands of American dead. Ahead was the bronze statue of George Washington, facing into the devastation and raising his hand to lead his men forward in victory. Around its base, with the destruction of the World Trade Center as their backdrop, l*****ts had set up shop, coloring anti-war posters even while rescue workers were risking their lives at Ground Zero.

In the coming days, the statue of Washington would be repeatedly vandalized by l*****ts drawing peace signs and “No War” and “War is Not the Answer” slogans on it. But that moment crystallized my realization that while Muslim terrorists had carried out the attack, it was the left we would have to fight.

While some New Yorkers had gone to help the victims of Islamic terrorists, the left had rushed to aid the terrorists. Unlike the rest of us, they were not shocked or horrified by the attack. They were treasonously working on ways to spin the murder of thousands of Americans to protect the enemy.

The greatest obstacle to defeating Islamic terrorism is still the left.

The left helped create Islamic terrorism; its immigration policies import terrorism while its civil rights arm obstructs efforts to prevent it and its anti-war rallies attack any effort to fight it. In America, in Europe and in Israel, and around the world, to get at Islamic terrorists, you have to go through the left.

When a Muslim terrorist comes to America, it’s the left that agitates to admit him. Before he k**ls, it’s the left that fights to protect him from the FBI. Afterward, l*****ts offer to be his lawyers. The left creates the crisis and then it fights against any effort to deal with it except through surrender and appeasement.

Islamic violence against non-Muslims predated the left. But it’s the left that made it our problem. Islamic terrorism in America or France exists because of Muslim immigration. And the left is obsessed with finding new ways to import more Muslims. Merkel is praised for opening up a Europe already under siege by Islamic terror, Sharia police, no-go zones and sex g***ming and groping gangs, to millions.

The left feverishly demands that the whole world follow her lead. Bill Gates would like America to be just like Germany. Israel’s deranged Labor Party leader Herzog urged the Jewish State to open its doors.

And then, after the next round of stabbings, car burnings and terror attacks, they blame the West for not “integrating” the un-integratable millions who had no more interest in being integrated than their l*****t patrons do in moving to Pakistan and praying to Allah on a threadbare rug. But “integration” is a euphemism for a raft of l*****t agenda items from social services spending to punishing h**e speech (though never that of the Imams crying for blood and death, but only of their native victims) to a foreign policy based on appeasement and surrender. Islamic terrorists k**l and l*****ts profit from the carnage.

The ongoing threat of Islamic terrorism is a manufactured crisis that the left cultivates because that gives it power. In a world without 9/11, the Obama presidency would never have existed. Neither would the Arab Spring and the resulting migration and wholesale t***sformation of Western countries.

In the UK, Labour used Muslim immigration as a deliberate political program to “change the country.” In Israel, Labor struck an illegal deal with Arafat that put sizable portions of the country under the control of terrorists while forcing the Jewish State into a series of concessions to terrorists and the left. The same fundamental pattern of Labour and Labor and the whole left is behind the rise of Islamic terrorism.

Muslim terrorism creates pressure that the left uses to achieve policy goals. Even when it can’t win e******ns, Muslim terrorism allows the left to create a crisis and then to set an agenda.

The left’s patronage of Islamic terrorists for its own political purposes follows a thread back to the origin of Islamic terrorism. Islamic violence against non-Muslims dates back to the founding of Islam, but the tactics of modern Islamic terrorism owe as much to Lenin as they do to Mohammed.

Today’s Islamic terrorist is the product of traditional Islamic theology and Soviet tactics. The USSR did not intend to create Al Qaeda, but they provided training and doctrine to terrorists from the Muslim world. The “secular” and “progressive” terrorists of the left either grew Islamist, like Arafat, or their tactics were copied and expanded on, like the PFLP, by a new generation of Islamic terrorists.

The earlier phase of Islamic organizations, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, had been inspired by f*****ts who were seeking to use them in their own wars. Over this layer of secret societies plotting takeovers and building networks of front groups, the Soviet Union added the terror tactics that had been employed by the left. And the l*****t mad bomber became the Muslim suicide bomber.

Terrorism in the Muslim world has evolved from functioning as a Third World proxy army for the left, in much the same way as guerrillas and terrorists from Asia, Africa and Latin America had, to a diaspora whose migrations lend a domestic terror arm to a Western left whose own spiteful activists have grown unwilling to put their lives on the line and go beyond tweeting words to throwing bombs.

With the Muslim Brotherhood, the origin organization of Al Qaeda, ISIS and Hamas, among many others, so tightly integrated into the American and European left that it is often hard to see where one begins and the other ends, Islam has become the militant arm of the purportedly secular left. Western l*****ts and Islamists have formed the same poisonous relationship as Middle Eastern l*****ts and Islamists did leading to the rise of the Ayatollah Khomeini and the Arab Spring. L*****ts expected Islamists to do the dirty work while they would take over. Instead the Islamists won and k**led them.

Having learned nothing from the Hitler-Stalin pact, the left has replayed the same betrayal with the Mohammed-Stalin pact in the Middle East and now in the West. But the end of the Mohammed-Stalin pact will not be a Socialist totalitarian utopia, but an Islamic theocracy of s***es, terror and death.

On September 11, I saw with my own eyes how eager and willing l*****ts were to rush to the aid of Islamic terrorists even while their fellow Americans were dying. Nothing has changed. Every Islamic act of brutality is met with lies and spin, with mass distraction and deception by the treasonous left. Every effort to fight Islamic terrorists is sabotaged, undermined and protested by the enemy within.

Since September 11, the left has trashed the FBI’s counterterrorism and has now succeeded in destroying the NYPD’s counterrorism while t***sforming the FDNY into an affirmative action project.What the September 11 hijackers could never accomplish on their own, the l*****ts did for them by defeating the three forces that had stood against Islamic terrorists on that day. And it would not surprise me at all if some of the “No War” scribblers have gone on to play an influential role in that treason.

The left has crippled domestic and international counterterrorism. American soldiers are not allowed to shoot terrorists and the FBI and NYPD can’t monitor mosques or even be taught what to look for. Islamic terrorism has achieved unprecedented influence and power under Obama. ISIS has created the first functioning caliph**e and Iran marches toward the first Jihadist nuclear bomb. The mass Muslim migration is beginning a process that will Islamize Europe far more rapidly than anyone expects.

The Jihad would not be a significant threat without the collaboration of the left. Without the left standing in the way, it’s a problem that could be solved in a matter of years. With the aid of the left, it threatens human civilization with a dark age that will erase our culture, our future and our freedom.

We cannot defeat Islam without defeating the left. That is the lesson I learned on September 11. It is a lesson that appears truer every single year as the left finds new ways to endanger us all.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/261613/left-real-terror-threat-daniel-greenfield

Supporting Ethanol Subsidies is crony capitalism...period.

Cars run on fuel. Politicians run on v**es, and they'll do almost anything to get them. That includes supporting mandates that force us to use ethanol, a fuel made from corn that Iowa farmers grow.
They support ethanol because Iowa is the first state to v**e on p**********l candidates. Candidates want to look strong at the start of the race, so every four years they become enthusiastic ethanol supporters. Even those who claim they believe in markets pander to Iowa's special interests.

Donald Trump, who doesn't seem to have a consistent political philosophy aside from bashing critics and foreigners, now has joined the ethanol-praising club. In fact, Trump says regulators should force gas stations to increase the amount of ethanol they use. It's a convenient way to attack his Iowa rival, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tex., who courageously says the mandate should be phased out.

Cruz is right. Legally mandating that a certain percentage of fuel used be ethanol is a bad idea for several reasons:

First, mandating ethanol means more land must be plowed to grow corn for fuel. The Department of Energy estimates that if corn ethanol replaced gasoline completely, we'd need to turn all cropland to corn -- plus 20 percent more land on top of that.

Second, requiring ethanol fuel raises the price of corn -- bad news for consumers who must pay more for food.

Third, although ethanol's supporters claim burning corn is "better for the environment," that's not true. Once you add the emissions from growing, shipping and processing the corn, ethanol creates more pollution than oil. Environmental groups such as Friends of the Earth, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Clean Air Task Force now oppose its use.

Finally, because corn is grown in America, promoters said ethanol would make us more energy independent. Even if the "independence" argument were valid, fracking accomplishes much more. (Anyway, it isn't a valid argument. Trade with Mexico and Canada is just fine. We don't need total independence.)

Since Trump is a businessman, I assume he realizes that ethanol is an expensive boondoggle that wouldn't survive in a competitive market. But in Iowa Trump says, "Ethanol is terrific."

Dr. Ben Carson didn't go that far but according to the Washington Examiner said that it would be wrong to end the subsidies. "People have made plans based on those kind of things," he says. "You can't just pull out the rug out from under people."

It sounds like most politicians want to get rid of subsidies in principle, but never right now -- certainly not in the middle of their campaigns. Sen. Marco Rubio says he'd support ending the mandate -- after another seven years.

At the Iowa Agriculture Summit, Chris Christie sounded annoyed that President Obama hasn't been more supportive of ethanol subsidies, saying, "Certainly anybody who's a competent president would get that done!"

Bernie Sanders, I-Ver., criticized subsidies in the past, but on Iowa public radio he sounded as if he loves the boondoggle: "We have to be supportive of that effort -- and take every step that we could, and in every way we can, including the growth of the biofuels industry."

Of course, big-government Democrats always want to subsidize more. Hillary Clinton says ethanol "holds the promise for not only more fuel for automobiles but for aviation ... and for military aircraft; we could be fueling so much air traffic with biofuels. We have just begun to explore what we can do."

Sure. Explore away! That's what market competition does. Entrepreneurs constantly explore options in search of profit. But that's very different from government forcing taxpayers to fund one particular fuel.

Only Cruz and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ken.) have consistently said that the market, not politicians, should choose fuels. Unfortunately, that principled stance hasn't brought them much support. P**********l-race betting at E******nBettingOdds.com has Cruz dropping and Paul tied for last.

Energy expert Jerry Taylor is right to say that running for office in Iowa not only means you must praise Christianity; it means being "willing to sacrifice children to the corn god."

http://townhall.com/columnists/johnstossel/2016/01/27/running-on-empty-n2110273/page/full

01/25/2016 P**********l Crimes Then And Now

Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-01-25/p**********l-crimes-then-and-now

Are Nixon’s and the Reagan administration’s crimes noticable on the scale of Clinton’s, George W. Bush’s, and Obama’s?

Not much remains of the once vibrant American left-wing. Among the brainwashed remnants there is such a hatred of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan that the commitment of these two presidents to ending dangerous military rivalries is unrecognized.

Whenever I write about the illegal invasions of other countries launched by Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama, l*****ts point to Chile, Nicaragua and Grenada and say that nothing has changed.

But a great deal has changed.

Reagan’s Priorities and the Establishment’s Agenda

When Reagan won the Republican p**********l nomination, he was told that although he had defeated the Establishment in the primaries, the v**ers would not be able to come to his defense in Washington.

He must not make Goldwater’s mistake and shun the Republican Establishment, but pick its p**********l candidate for his vice president.

Otherwise, the Republican Establishment would work to defeat him in the p**********l e******n just as Rockefeller had undermined Goldwater.

As a former movie star, Nancy Reagan put great store on personal appearance. Reagan’s California crew was a motley one.

Lynn Nofziger, for example, sported a beard and a loosely knotted tie if a tie at all. He moved around his office in sock feet without shoes.

When Nancy saw Bush’s man, Jim Baker, she concluded that the properly attired Baker was the person that she wanted standing next to her husband when photos were made.

Consequently, Reagan’s first term had Bush’s most capable operative as Chief of Staff of the White House.

To get Reagan’s program implemented with the Republican Establishment occupying the chief of staff position was a hard fight.

I don’t mean that Jim Baker was malevolent and wished to damage Reagan. For a member of the Republican Establishment, Jim Baker was very intelligent, and he is a hard person to dislike.

The problem with Baker was two-fold. He was not part of the Reagan team and did not understand what we were about or why Reagan was elected.

Americans wanted the stagflation that had destroyed Jimmy Carter’s presidency ended, and they were tired of the ongoing Cold War with the Soviet Union and its ever present threat of nuclear Armageddon.

It is not that Baker (or VP Bush) were personally opposed to these goals.

The problem was that the Establishment, whether Republican or Democratic, is responsive not to solving issues but to accommodating the special interest groups that comprise the Establishment.

For the Establishment, preserving power is the primary issue.

As The Saker makes clear, in both parties the Anglos of my time, of which George H. W. Bush was the last, have been replaced by the neocons.

The neocons represent an ideology in addition to special interest groups, such as the Israel Lobby.

The Republican Establishment and the Federal Reserve did not understand Reagan’s Supply-Side economic policy. In the entire post World War II period, reductions in tax rates were associated with the Keynesian demand management macroeconomic policy of increasing aggregate demand.

The Reagan administration had inherited high inflation, and economists, Wall Street, and the Republican Establishment, along with Reagan’s budget director, David Stockman, misunderstood Reagan’s supply-side policy as a stimulus to consumer demand that would cause inflation, already high, to explode.

On top of this, conservatives in Congress were disturbed that Reagan’s policy would worsen the deficit—in their opinion the worst evil of all.

Reagan’s supply-side economic policy was designed not to increase aggregate demand, but to increase aggregate supply. Instead of prices rising, output and employment would rise.

This was a radically new way of using fiscal policy to raise incentives to produce rather than to manage aggregate demand, but instead of helping people to understand the new policy, the media ridiculed and mischaracterized the policy as “voodoo economics,” “trickle- down economics,” and “tax cuts for the rich.”

These mischaracterizations are still with us three decades later.

Nevertheless, the supply-side policy was partially implemented. It was enough to end stagflation and the policy provided the basis for Clinton’s economic success.

It also provided the economic basis that made credible Reagan’s strategy of forcing the Soviets to choose between a new arms race or negotiating the end of the Cold War.


Ending the Cold War and Bad CIA Advice

President Reagan’s goal of ending the Cold War was upsetting to both conservatives and the military/security complex. Conservatives warned that wily Soviets would deceive Reagan and gain from the negotiations.

The military/security complex regarded Reagan’s goal of ending the Cold War as a threat comparable to Nixon’s opening to China and arms limitations treaties with the Soviet Union.

President John F. Kennedy had threatened the same powerful interests when he realized from the Cuban Missile Crisis that the US must put an end to the risk of nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union.

With the success of his economic policy in putting the US economy back on its feet, Reagan intended to force a negotiated end to the Cold War by threatening the Soviets with an arms race that their suffering economy could not endure.

However, the CIA advised Reagan that if he renewed the arms race, he would lose it, because the Soviet economy, being centrally planned, was in the hands of Soviet leaders, who, unlike Reagan, could allocate as much of the economy as necessary to win the arms race.

Reagan did not believe the CIA.

He created a secret p**********l committee with authority to investigate the CIA’s evidence for its claim, and he appointed me to the committee.

The committee concluded that the CIA was wrong.

Reagan always told us that his purpose was to end, not win, the Cold War. He said that the only victory he wanted was to remove the threat of nuclear annihilation.

He made it clear that he did not want a Soviet scalp.

Like Nixon, to keep conservatives on board, he used their rhetoric.

Curing stagflation and ending the Cold War were the main interests of President Reagan. Perhaps I am mistaken, but I do not think he paid much attention to anything else.

Grenada and the Contras in Nicaragua were explained to Reagan as necessary interventions to make the Soviets aware that there would be no further Soviet advances and, thus, help to bring the Soviets to the negotiating table to end the nuclear threat.

Unlike the George W. Bush and Obama regimes, the Reagan administration had no goal of a universal American Empire exercising hegemony over the world.

Grenada and Nicaragua were not part of an empire-building policy. Reagan understood them as a message to the Soviets that “you are not going any further, so let’s negotiate.”

Conservatives regarded the reformist movements in Grenada and Nicaragua as c*******t subversion, and were concerned that these movements would ally with the Soviet Union, thus creating more Cuba-like situations.

Even President Carter opposed the rise of a left-wing government in Nicaragua.

Grenada and Nicaragua were reformist movements rather than c*******t-inspired, and the Reagan administration should have supported them, but could not because of the hysteria of American conservatives.

Reagan knew that if his constituency saw him as “soft on c*******m,” he would lack the domestic support that he needed in order to negotiate with the Kremlin the end of the Cold War.


America Playing the Foreign Policy Game

Today Western governments support and participate in Washington’s invasions, but not then.

The invasion of Grenada was criticized by both the British and Canadian governments. The US had to use its UN Security Council veto to save itself from being condemned for “a fragrant violation of international law.”

The Sandinistas in Nicaragua were reformers opposed to the corruption of the Somoza regime that catered to American corporate and financial interests.

The Sandinistas aroused the same opposition from Washington as every reformist government in Latin America always has.

Washington has traditionally regarded Latin American reformers as Marxist revolutionary movements and has consistently o*******wn reformist governments in behalf of the United Fruit Company and other private interests that have large holdings in countries ruled by unrepresentative governments.

Washington’s policy was, and still is, short-sighted and hypocritical. The United States should have allied with representative governments, not against them.

However, no American president, no matter how wise and well- intentioned, would have been a match for the combination of the interests of politically-connected US corporations and the fear of more Cubas.

Remember Marine General Smedley Butler’s confession that he and his US Marines served to make Latin America safe for the United Fruit Company and “some lousy investment of the bankers.”


Information is Power

Americans, even well informed ones, dramatically over-estimate the knowledge of presidents and the neutrality of the information that is fed to them by the various agencies and advisors.

Information is power, and presidents get the information that Washington wants them to receive. In Washington private agendas abound, and no president is immune from these agendas.

A cabinet secretary, budget director, or White House chief of staff who knows how Washington works and has media allies is capable, if so inclined, of shaping the agenda independently of the president’s preferences.

The Establishment prefers a nonentity as president, a person without experience and a cadre of knowledgeable supporters to serve him.

Harry Truman was, and Obama is, putty in the hands of the Establishment.

If you read Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick’s The Untold History of the US, you will see that the Democratic Establishment, realizing that FDR would not survive his fourth term, forced his popular Vice President Henry Wallace off the ticket and put in his place the inconsequential Truman.

With Truman in place, the military/security complex was able to create the Cold War.

From Bad to Worse

The t***sgressions of law that occurred during the Nixon and Reagan years are small when compared to the crimes of Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama, and the crimes were punished.

Nixon was driven from office and numerous Reagan administration officials were prosecuted and convicted.

Neither Nixon nor Reagan could have run roughshod over both Constitution and statutory law, setting aside habeas corpus and due process and detaining US citizens indefinitely without charges and convictions, authorizing and justifying torture, spying without warrants, and executing US citizens without due process of law.

Moreover, unlike the Clinton, Bush, and Obama regimes, the Reagan administration prosecuted those who broke the law. Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams was convicted, National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane was convicted, Chief of CIA Central American Task Force Alan Fiers was convicted, Clair George, Chief of the CIA’s Division of Covert Operations was convicted.

Richard Secord was convicted. National Security Advisor John Poindexter was convicted.

Oliver North was convicted. North’s conviction was later overturned, and President George H.W. Bush pardoned others.

But the Reagan Administration held its operatives accountable to law.

No American President since Reagan has held the government accountable.

Clair George was convicted of lying to congressional committees. Richard Secord was convicted of lying to Congress. John Poindexter was convicted of lying to Congress.

Alan Fiers was convicted of withholding information from Congress. Compare these convictions then with James R. Clapper now.

President Obama appointed Clapper Director of National Intelligence on June 5, 2010, declaring that Clapper “possesses a quality that I value in all my advisers: a willingness to tell leaders what we need to know even if it’s not what we want to hear.”

With this endorsement, Clapper proceeded to lie to Congress under oath, a felony. Clapper was not indicted and prosecuted. He was not even fired or forced to resign.

For executive branch officials, perjury is now a dead letter law.

The destruction of the rule of law and accountable government has extended to state and local levels. Police officers no longer “serve and protect” the public.

The most dangerous encounter most Americans will ever experience is with police, who brutalize citizens without cause and even shoot them down in their homes and on their streets.

A police badge has become a license to k**l, and police use it to the hilt. During the Iraq War, more Americans were murdered by police than the military lost troops in combat.

And nothing is done about it.

The country is again facing e******ns, and the abuse of US citizens by “their” police is not an issue. Neither are the many illegal interventions by Washington into the internal affairs of other sovereign countries or the unconstitutional spying that violates citizens’ privacy.

The fact that Washington is gearing up for yet another war in the Middle East is not an important issue in the e******n.

In the US the rule of law, and with it liberty, have been lost. With few exceptions, Americans are too ignorant and unconcerned to do anything about it.

The longer the rule of law is set aside, the more difficult it is to reestablish it.

Sooner or later the rule of law ceases even as a memory.

No candidate in the upcoming e******n has made the rule of law an issue.

Americans have become a small-minded divided people, ruled by petty hatreds, who are easily set against one another and against other peoples by their rulers.