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H.L. Mencken was prophetic!
“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
And, thus, this is worth re-showing. (See 1 below.)
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This is what we are up against folks!:This is about an hour long webinar, discussing the history of Islam radicals and Hitler right through the present day. Very interesting if you enjoy history. I highly recommend it
RadicalIslam.org has posted yesterday's webinar, Hitler's Islamist Allies & the War Today, on our website to make it available for viewing on demand.
The webinar can be viewed here. http://www.radicalislam.org/news/webinar-hitlers-islamist-allies-and-the-war-today
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This president is not only deceitful and insincere but he is also a captive of ideological thinking that is ass backwards. Had Romney won, I suspect the economy would be humming or well on its way to doing so because he would not have been playing the game of trying to orchestrate the defeat of Democrats. (See 2 below.)
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It is the most open administration if everyone keeps their mouth shut! (See 3 below.)
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I have mentioned previously I am reading Amity Shlaes excellent book on Coolidge and am sure , as I also have noted, it will cause historians to revisit and elevate his place in presidential history. (See 4 below.)
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Does Jeb Bush's upbeat op ed piece point the way or does Rand Paul's view?
Is Rand Paul a modern Coolidge? Is Jeb Bush a version of a more intellectual Ronald Reagan?
Would a Bush-Paul ticket sell? (See 5 below.)
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Dick
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1)This has been around before but it’s too meaningful to stop circulating.
2) Long read, but interesting summary of Obama's "open minded" meeting with GOP.
Over dinner at a swank hotel a few blocks from the White House, Republican senators wanted to know if President Barack Obama would support a gradual increase in the age of eligibility for Medicare, set at 65 since the program's inception more than four decades ago.
The president hedged, according to several at the event, recalling the discussion on a cost-saving change to Medicare that most if not all leading Democrats in Congress adamantly oppose. One later recalled that Obama "drew no bright line" in opposition, but the lawmaker came away believing that the president "would be very resistant" even if it might unlock a long-sought deal to reduce deficits and an ever-growing federal debt.
That lawmaker and some of the others describing what occurred in the meetings spoke on condition of anonymity, noting that the sessions were supposed to be private discussions.
The politically fraught moment came at the outset of Obama's widely publicized recent string of meetings with rank-and-file lawmakers. The unusual commitment of presidential time netted public praise from his most implacable critics and was supplemented by numerous conversations among lawmakers and senior White House aides.
No breakthroughs were anticipated and none emerged, and for all the warm talk, House Speaker John Boehner delivered a tart summation.
"Republicans want to balance the budget. The president doesn't. Republicans want to solve our long-term debt problem. The president doesn't," he said, while adding it was incumbent on all sides to seek common ground.
Across the hours, there were moments of levity – and an expression of gratitude to Arizona Sen. John McCain for his service to the nation on the 40th anniversary of his release from a prisoner of war camp in Vietnam.
Evidently the food was pretty good, too.
One presidential aide left a meeting with the Senate Republican rank and file toting a carry-out bag from lunch that featured lobster salad and blueberry pie with ice cream.
"Ultimately it's a matter of the House and the Senate ... getting together and being willing to compromise," the president said as he departed the Capitol on Thursday.
Even on that point, Republicans disagree.
Over and over, they told Obama, he must lead, tone down the attacks on them and lean on Democrats to accept concessions in benefit programs.
Over and over, he told Republicans that if he is to make concessions on Medicare and elsewhere, they would have to agree to higher taxes.
On that, there was little if any give, particularly with Republicans noting that Obama's approval ratings have recently begun receding for the first time since his re-election.
At the dinner at the Jefferson Hotel more than 10 days ago, Republican senators noted that some of the changes under discussion for Medicare would raise costs for wealthier seniors and also that higher revenues might result from what one called "pro-growth tax reform."
But there was no support for raising taxes, recalled one participant at the dinner. Several said the resolve stemmed from last winter's agreement to raise tax rates in legislation that contained only skimpy spending cuts.
By the time of his final meeting Thursday, Obama told House Democrats that, for now at least, they needn't worry about having to make concessions like slowing the growth of cost-of-living benefits under Social Security and other programs. Republicans, he said, weren't willing to contemplate enough additional tax revenue to warrant the trade-off.
Policy differences aside, there was an undercurrent of mistrust if not long-nursed grievances among Republicans, many of whom were getting their first look up-close look at the Democrat in the White House.
Rep. James Lankford of Oklahoma told the president he had heard that his first call on election night last November had been to the leader of the Democrats' 2014 campaign committee, rather than to Boehner, the Republican speaker.
Not so, Obama replied, saying he had indeed called Boehner first, but he was asleep. "Yeah, it was an early night for us," called out one lawmaker, drawing laughs from a group that lost eight seats in November.
Later in the same meeting, Rep. Tom Price of Georgia referred to a lack of trust between the two sides. According to participants in the meeting, he chalked up Obama's delay in presenting a budget this spring to politics.
The president replied that if he were solely interested in politics he would be running a "Mediscare" campaign rather than holding meetings with Republicans.
Across the Capitol, Sen. John Thune of South Dakota singled out an interview in which he said the president accused Republicans of wanting to eviscerate Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
"Nobody here believes those programs ought to be gutted," Thune told Obama, the senator later recalled. Instead, he told the president that Republicans want to preserve the programs for the future.
The president stood his ground, saying the Republican plan to turn Medicaid and food stamps into all-purpose grants to the states would inevitably lead to deep cuts in services for the needy.
By all accounts, Medicare, which provides health care to millions of seniors, is the key to any deficit-reduction compromise.
In his budget a year ago, Obama proposed saving $305 billion over a decade from the program, although little of that derives from the sort of changes Republicans say are essential to slow the growth in health care costs.
Roughly half would come from drug companies that sell medicine to low-income Medicare beneficiaries. A $63 billion savings would come from changes in payment rules for post-hospital care facilities; $36 billion from lowering the amount of bad debt the government would cover for providers.
An additional $28 billion would come from raising premiums for wealthier seniors beginning in 2017.
Rep. Dave Camp of Michigan, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, noted that the president had said repeatedly last winter that Congress should pass tax items they agreed on and leave others for later.
Seeking to turn the tables, he asked Obama why the White House wouldn't now agree to pass legislation to slow the growth of cost-of-living increases in Social Security and other benefit programs and increase Medicare fees for wealthier seniors, steps Obama has backed in the past.
Obama replied that Republicans would have to agree to higher taxes first, according to several lawmakers present.
Even then, it was clear when he met with Senate Democrats that Obama he would face resistance from his allies in Congress.
Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an independent who sides with Democrats, said he and Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa spoke out strongly against changes in calculating cost-of-living increases.
"It would make major cuts in Social Security benefits ... and also very significant cuts for disabled veterans," Sanders said in a telephone interview.
"I do not believe that the American people want to balance the budget on the backs of disabled veterans or widows who lost their husbands in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."
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3)Graham: White House Told Benghazi Survivors to ‘Be Quiet’
Sen. Lindsey Graham charged on Friday that survivors of the Benghazi attack have been “told to be quiet” and feel that they cannot come forward to tell what happen in the Sept. 11 assault on the U.S. consulate that killed four Americans.
“The bottom line is they feel that they can't come forth,” the South Carolina Republican told Fox News, “They've been told to be quiet. “We cannot let this administration or any other administration get away with hiding from the American people and Congress — people who were there in real time to tell the story,” Graham said. Graham said he remained troubled by the inaccurate or incomplete accounts from the Obama administration in the days following the attack. He is among several GOP lawmakers pressing for access to and more information about the survivors, Fox reports. But Jay Carney, the White House spokesman, denied on Friday that the Benghazi survivors wre being pressured by the Obama administration. “I'm sure that the White House is not preventing anyone from speaking,” Carney said on Friday at a news briefing. According to Fox, a congressional source said that investigators believe that 37 people were in in Benghazi on behalf of the State Department and CIA on Sept. 11. With the deaths of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others, at least 33 people were evacuated. Of them, a State Department official told Fox, were three diplomatic security agents and one contractor who was injured in the assault, one seriously. A diplomatic security source told Fox News the State Department diplomatic security agent who was in the most serious condition suffered a severe head injury during the second wave of the attacks at the annex. The agent has been described as the likely State Department employee visited at Walter Reed Medical Center by Secretary of State John Kerry in January, Fox reports. While not denying the details, the State Department official offered no comment to Fox on the nature of the worker’s injuries or whether the agent was visited by Kerry or Hillary Clinton before she left office. Leading Republicans in the Senate and House have been calling on the State Department to identify the injured and make them available to congressional investigators. So far, they say their calls have gone unanswered, Fox reports. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4)Coolidge: A Politician Uncannily Deserving of Respect
By Matthew May
"Debt takes its toll."
So begins Coolidge, the magnificent new biography of the 30th president of the United States by bestselling author and free-market journalist Amity Shlaes. No writer is perhaps better-suited to write a biography of the fiscal sentinel Calvin Coolidge, and this biography is indeed a prequel to her masterpiece, The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression.
Calvin Coolidge found himself on the ballot as Warren G. Harding's vice presidential running mate on the 1920 Republican Party ticket after an unlikely yet highly successful career in Massachusetts politics. Harding and Coolidge campaigned for smaller government as a response to the rising federal debt following World War I, a top tax rate over 70 percent, the nationalization of railroads, and Progressive attempts to establish governmental control of water power and electricity.
As president, Harding signed legislation that gave the executive branch more control of the federal budget, lowered the top tax rate, and proposed selling naval petroleum reserves to private entities. Yet Harding appointed cronies to several significant positions who were incapable of resisting bribes and favoritism. To stanch the damage, Harding embarked on a West Coast trip but never came back. He died, and Coolidge found himself president.
Into the breach Coolidge stepped. He vowed to see Harding's budgetary and tax reforms through to "perfection," meaning without scandal. To that end, he quickly announced that government spending would be slashed: "We must have no carelessness in our dealings with public property or the expenditure of public money. Such a condition is characteristic of undeveloped people, or of a decadent generation." Coolidge led by the example of discipline, meeting with his budget director every Friday prior to Cabinet meetings in order to cull the budget and construct arguments for denying requests for more spending. Shlaes demonstrates how Coolidge's twin pillars of fiscal policy -- tax cuts coupled with tight budgeting -- brought more tax receipts, budget surplus, and economic prosperity. The publication of this book is fortuitous.
Coolidge is, however, much more than economic policy, budgets, and taxes. It is also a story about fathers and sons. One of the interesting subtexts of this book is the relationship between Coolidge and his father, the Vermont jack-of-all-trades and legislator John Coolidge. Shlaes demonstrates how much the future president leaned on his father, learned from him, admired him, andshared his triumphs and defeats. Nothing better symbolized both men's quiet confidence than the scene of Coolidge's first recitation of the presidential oath, which Shlaes elegantly describes. Coolidge was visiting the family home in Plymouth Notch, Vermont, when the news of Harding's death reached the house with no telephone. Coolidge was sworn in by the light of a kerosene lamp by his father, a notary public. The president of the United States then went back to bed.
Coolidge forged a similar bond of mutual respect and admiration with his sons, Calvin and John, with whom he shared a pithy sense of humor. No stranger to grief in his life, Coolidge's agony at watching Calvin Jr. die of a blood infection in 1924, at perhaps the peak of Coolidge's popularity and effectiveness, is devastatingly portrayed by Shlaes. Only later, in his autobiography, did Coolidge reveal a glimpse of the profound grief with which he coped for his remaining days in the White House. He wrote, "When he went, the glory of the presidency went with him."
Shlaes does an outstanding job of detailing Coolidge's rise in Massachusetts. One of the significant threads running through the narrative is the influence of Amherst College in, and Amherst men on, Coolidge's life during and after his career there. Shlaes relates with well-researched detail Coolidge's actions as chairman of a special legislative committee during the strike of workers of the American Woolen Company in Lawrence, and his steel-eyed determination as Massachusetts governor during the 1919 Boston police strike, which placed Coolidge in high esteem nationally.
One comes away from this book with the image of Coolidge as a governor -- not so much as a chief executive, but rather as the human incarnation of the mechanical device that limits the speed of an automobile. Coolidge could be and was "progressive" in many instances during his political career. Yet he had a sense of appropriate boundaries that the overreaching radicals of his era such as Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson -- and certainly the far left in power in Washington today -- would not and will not set. "It is often much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones," Coolidge once wrote to his father. Coolidge vetoed 50 bills and utilized the pocket veto. He utilized the rules at his disposal and went no farther.
In that sense, Coolidge is difficult to read. Coolidge, the consummate profile of New England economy and dignity, was the diametric opposite of the hacks and crooks that populate all levels of contemporary government, who ram legislation through with no heed to the fiscal, institutional, and moral price they exact. Coolidge's reluctance to say too much, his ability to say no, and his willingness to cede his office in the name of principle would brand him a freak today. Shortly before his death and prior to the inauguration of Franklin Roosevelt, Coolidge knew the ground was shifting toward more government encroachment, meddling, and waste: "I have been out of touch with political activities I feel that I no longer fit in with these times."
Yet Shlaes reminds us that leaders can be responsible stewards of the treasury, and she shows us a blueprint for the way out from under the crushing debt we have so recklessly amassed. Admittedly, we live in different times. Yet history is often cyclical, and the ground may shift again. Coolidge restored honor and dignity to the White House in the wake of scandal, economy in the face of profligate spending.
Perhaps someone of Coolidge's character, economy, and attitude will present himself or herself, and the American electorate will respond positively. The public's revulsion to the current phony crisis of sequestration and the public's interest in Rand Paul's filibuster give glimmers of hope. Our current political leadership -- and we who elect them -- are spending the country into ruin. The laws of man can be bent and broken; the laws of economics can not. As Shlaes makes clear, Coolidge would be quick to remind us that one way or another, we must pay the cost.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5)Jeb Bush: The Road to Republican Revival The central mission of conservatives is to reignite American social mobility—restoring the right to riseBy JEB BUSH
My dad recently said, "Put away the harps!" He was speaking about his health, but I believe what he said applies to the conservative movement and the future of the country.
Americans have the sense that the economy is fragile, that its rewards are unfairly tilted toward the few, and that the greatest prosperity in this century will be enjoyed by people in other lands and not by our children.
This conclusion is wrong. America could be on the threshold of its greatest century.
With new drilling technologies, the United States will soon have an energy surplus. This means trillions of dollars in new wealth and a foreign policy not dominated by oil.
Given advances in agriculture and bio-engineering, America could be the Saudi Arabia of grain in a century when the world is clamoring for more food. Wireless communication, artificial intelligence and rapid advances in life sciences are transforming every facet of American business and daily life.
Entire classes of diseases are on the verge of being eradicated by manipulating individual molecules on the surfaces of living cells.
Technological innovation means that in the coming decades, driverless vehicles will flawlessly move people and products on our highways, never getting lost, never having accidents. The development of 3D printing machines is racing ahead—and they will be down-scaled for home use, so that consumers can instantly create thousands of objects at the touch of a button.
This country is younger than all other industrialized nations, and if we get immigration right, we're going to stay young. By 2050, China will have more old people than the United States has people.
These are but a few of the country's advantages, and collectively they point toward a century of unparalleled prosperity and world leadership.
But the bright future is at risk if the federal government continues on its arc of irresponsibility. America's government-spending addiction and its lackluster system of public education are the two greatest impediments to achieving the country's potential.
I know conservatives have the solution. As governor of Florida, I balanced the state budget for eight years in a row while cutting taxes every year. I have dedicated my adult life to revolutionizing schools to make them serve children and parents and not an indifferent bureaucracy.
All Republican successes at the state level can be undone if the GOP continues to lose presidential elections. The party will forfeit its opportunity to chart a better future for the republic. In the last six presidential elections, more than 20 million times, Americans made the conscious decision that someone other than a Republican offered the nation a better future. This is because too often the conservative message was focused on what we are against, not on what we support.
We can learn from our mistakes. We must move beyond the divisive and extraneous issues that currently define public debate. The Republican Party must not write off entire segments of American society by assuming that its principles have limited appeal.
For the same reason that millions of immigrants from every nation were drawn to American shores, we need to draw into the Republican Party people from every corner of society. That can be done, because conservative principles, not liberal dogma, best reflect the ideals that made this nation great.
These core principles—greater individual responsibility, more personal freedom, smaller and more effective government—are the only principles that empower people to rise to the top, to raise a family and to be free.
The face of the Republican Party needs to be the face of every American. Real relationships take time to grow, and they begin with a genuine interest in the stories, dreams and challenges harbored within each of us.
I met Berthy Aponte, the mother of a developmentally disabled child, at a campaign stop in 1998 when she stood up and challenged me to help children like hers. Over the following months, I traveled Florida with Berthy, visited group homes, and talked to parents who feared nothing more than having their disabled child outlive them and become the ward of an uncaring state. My personal connection with Berthy caused me, as a governor, to have a renewed focus on helping the developmentally disabled. Elevating their lives elevated the lives of all Floridians.
Today, the sad reality is that if you're born poor, if your parents didn't go to college, if you don't know your father, if English isn't spoken at home—then the odds are stacked against you. You are more likely to stay poor today than at any other time since World War II.
Conservatives have allowed liberals to channel the anger and frustration that comes from this oppressive dynamic to attack the very idea of success itself. In their view, anyone who has climbed to the top 1% has committed some form of gross social breach and deserves scorn. This is enormously shortsighted. In a fair capitalist system, financial success should be the byproduct of innovation and achievement.
The central mission of conservatives is to reignite social mobility in this country—restoring the right to rise.
First, America needs a government that allows both small people to rise and large businesses to fail. Government has a role in regulating, but its role shouldn't include picking the winners and losers.
Second, the country needs to equip every child with the best tools to rise—a quality education. The U.S. spends more per pupil than any other country yet these pupils frequently rank in the bottom 20% on international math and science tests.
Somewhere in America a child is being born whose bold idea may save a life, or the lives of millions. For every child who reaches his full abilities, there are a hundred who could have done the same but are stuck in failing and indifferent schools. Reform-minded conservatives have the resolve and the record to confront and end this tragic waste of human potential.
America needs an education transformation based on standards benchmarked to the best of the world, a system of no-excuses accountability that refuses to accept failure and rewards excellence. The country needs a culture based on empowering parents with an abundance of choices and a deep understanding of the transformative power of digital learning.
Third, Americans need to reestablish that success is a good thing. We do this by offering role models who demonstrate that success begins with a bold idea, that it is often created where nothing formerly existed, and that the resulting wealth can spread to every part of the nation.
Fourth, America needs a new, forward-thinking immigration system that replaces the failed status quo, meets the country's economic needs and honors its immigrant heritage and the rule of law. For the millions who are here illegally, there should be a path to bring them out of the shadows and into legal status. This path could eventually include citizenship, as long as those who have been waiting patiently to enter the country legally receive priority.
Finally, each of us in the conservative movement needs to recognize the limits of government and the much more powerful influences of parents, churches, charities and role models. There is a political realm and a social realm, and we shouldn't confuse the two. Government should fill potholes. It is our individual duty to fill the holes in the human heart.
Conservatives can do so much more by setting an example and living by our principles than by merely talking. We need to be out in our communities helping neighbors, mentoring children and demonstrating that generosity, compassion and human potential are immensely more powerful than a thousand government programs.
There is a path forward as conservatives, and our future is extraordinarily bright. We have within our grasp the means by which our country will reclaim its momentum, leave its indelible imprint on this remarkable century and secure a better future for all.
Mr. Bush was the Republican governor of Florida from 1997 to 2007. This op-ed is adapted from his remarks to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., on Friday.
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